UC-NRLF 


HARPER'S  LIBRARY  of  LIVING  THOUGHT 


THE 
TRANS- 
MIGRATION 
OF  SOULS 


BY 

D.  ALFRED 
BERTHOLET 


HARPER 
BROTHERS 

LONDONXNEWYOEK 


THE 

TRANSMIGRATION 
OF  SOULS 


BY 

D.  ALFRED  BERTHOLET 

PROFESSOR     OF     THEOLOGY 
IN    THE     UNIVERSITY    OF    BASLE 

TRANSLATED    BY 
REV.    H.   J.   CHAYTOR,   M.A. 

HEADMASTER    OF    PLYMOUTH    COLLEGE 


LONDON   AND   NEW  YORK 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS 

45   ALBEMARLE   STREET,   W. 
1909 


CONTENTS 


PART    I 

IDEAS   ANTECEDENT   TO   THE   BELIEF   IN 
METEMPSYCHOSIS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  THE  BELIEF  THAT  THE  SOUL  CAN  BE  SEPA- 
RATED FROM  MAN'S  BODY  3 

II.  THE  BELIEF  THAT  ORGANISMS  OTHER  THAN 

HUMAN  POSSESS  SOULS    .        .  .10 

ANIMAL  SOULS n 

PLANT  SOULS 17 

SOULS   IN    OTHER    MATERIAL   OBJECTS  .         22 

III.  THE   BELIEF   IN   THE   TRANSMIGRATION   OF 

SOULS  FROM  ONE  BEING  TO  ANOTHER  .      24 

TRANSMIGRATION  FROM  MAN  TO  MAN  .  24 
TRANSMIGRATION  FROM  MEN  TO  ANIMALS  29 
TRANSMIGRATION  FROM  MEN  TO  PLANTS  .  42 

TRANSMIGRATION    FROM    MAN   TO    INANI- 
MATE OBJECTS 48 

PART  II 

METEMPSYCHOSIS    PROPERLY    SO   CALLED 
I.  PRELIMINARY  CONSIDERATIONS      ...      57 

II.  METEMPSYCHOSIS  AMONG  THE  CELTS    .        .      61 
vii 


271636 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

III.  METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN  INDIA     ....  64 

VEDIC-BRAHMAN  BELIEFS    ....  64 

BUDDHIST  BELIEFS 72 

IV.  THE  GREEK  DOCTRINE  OF  METEMPSYCHOSIS  79 

V.  THE  BELIEF  IN  METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN  OTHER 

QUARTERS 86 

IN  THE  BIBLE  AND  IN  JUDAISM  ...  86 

IN  ISLAM 94 

IN  THE  CHRISTIAN  WORLD  ....  95 

VI.  CONCLUSION 119 


PART   I 

IDEAS  ANTECEDENT  TO  THE   BELIEF 
IN   METEMPSYCHOSIS 


THREE  presuppositions  are  necessarily  ante- 
cedent to  any  belief  in  the  transmigration  of 
souls. 

1.  The  belief  that  man  has  a  soul  which  can 

be  separated  from  his  material  body. 

2.  The   belief    that    non- human   organisms 

(animals,  plants,  and  perhaps  even  in- 
animate objects)  possess  souls  of  like 
nature. 

3.  The  belief  that  the  souls  both  of  men  and 

of  lower  organisms  can  be  transferred 
from  one  organism  to  another. 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION 
OF  SOULS 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   BELIEF  THAT  THE  SOUL  CAN   BE 
SEPARATED   FROM   MAN'S   BODY 

TET  us  first  consider  the  belief  that  man 
-L^  has  a  soul  which  can  be  separated 
from  his  body,  or,  to  express  the  idea  by  a 
metaphor,  that  the  connection  of  the  soul 
with  the  body  is  that  of  a  guest  with  a  house 
in  which  he  stays  and  lives,  with  the  ijiten- 
tion  of  leaving  it  after  a  certain  lapse  of 
time.  So  far  as  we  can  tell,  this  idea  can 
be  traced  to  the  earliest  periods  of  man's 
mental  history.  In  modern  times  the 
popular  conclusion  that  a  "  soul "  exists, 
is  usually  deduced  from  the  phenomena  of 
"  thought,  perception,  and  will "  :  man 

3 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

has  a  soul,  because  he  can  think,  feel,  and 
will.  In  the  uninterrupted  activity  of 
these  normal  intellectual  functions,  we 
believe  that  we  may  observe,  so  to  speak, 
the  pulsation  which  indicates  their  vitality. 
Primitive  man  reasoned  very  differently  : 
his  attention,  like  that  of  a  child,  was  first 
attracted,  not  by  the  normal  and  its  con- 
stant regular  recurrence,  but  by  the  ab- 
normal, which  struck  him  as  strange  and 
extraordinary.  Now  man  was  confronted 
by  one  abnormal  fact,  which  even  now  he 
has  not  entirely  ceased  to  regard  as  unusual, 
the  fact  of  death.  Death,  then,  must  first  be 
considered  when  we  ask  what  led  men  to 
infer  the  existence  of  the  soul. 

What  is  the  chief  fact  that  distinguishes 
the  living  man  from  the  dead  ?  The  only 
outward  sign  is  the  cessation  of  respiration. 
With  the  last  breath  a  "  something  "  leaves 
the  body,  which  existed  within  it  during 
life.  A  window  or  door  is  thrown  open 
when  a  man  dies,  a  custom  still  widespread 
4 


/ 


SOUL  SEPARATED   FROM   BODY 

among  our  own  country  folk.  Similarly, 
Hottentots,  Fiji  Islanders,  Samoyeds, 
Indians,  Siamese,  Chinese,  and  others  make 
a  hole  in  the  roof  of  the  house  or  hut  in 
which  a  man  dies,  apparently  with  the 
object  of  offering  free  passage  to  the  mysteri- 
ous "  something  "  which  leaves  the  body 
at  death.  I  speak  of  the  mysterious  "  some- 
thing "  :  but  the  poet  of  old  unhesitatingly 
gives  it  a  name,  in  describing  the  death  of 
Orpheus : 

"  The  soul,  breathed  forth,  then  faded  in  the  air." 

This  breath  or  spirit-soul  (in  the  most 
different  languages  the  word  "  soul  "  origin- 
ally means  simply  breath)  thus  withdraws 
from  the  eye  of  man,  which  has  no  power 
to  perceive  it.  But  suppose  for  a  moment 
that  primitive  man,  whose  psychological 
knowledge  is  not  equal  to  ours,  sees  a  dream 
and  dreams,  perhaps,  that  his  dead  friend 
is  hunting  with  him  as  in  days  gone  by  : 
he  sees  him  string  his  bow,  shoot  his  arrow, 
5 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

pursue  the  animal  he  has  hit,  and  call  upon 
his  friend  to  follow  :  a  conversation  ensues, 
as  has  happened  often  enough  in  his  life- 
time, and  so  forth.  How  is  the  dreamer  to 
explain  these  experiences  when  he  wakes  ? 
The  body  of  his  dead  friend  lies  motionless 
in  the  grave,  a  prey  to  corruption.  Yet  it 
was  the  form  of  his  friend  that  he  saw  in 
his  dream,  and  it  was  his  friend's  voice 
that  he  heard  :  with  his  own  eyes  he  saw 
him,  with  his  own  ears  he  heard  him  speak. 
What  is  he  to  understand  ?  To  conclude, 
as  we  should  conclude,  that  it  was  merely  a 
dream  is  so  obvious  a  statement  that  we 
can  hardly  conceive  of  any  other  reply. 
But  the  power  to  discriminate  between 
dream  illusions  and  reality  is  by  no  means 
innate  in  man  and  must  be  acquired  by 
experience :  only  after  a  long  course  of 
development  was  it  attained.  A  very 
different  conclusion  offered  itself  to  primi- 
tive man  :  what  he  saw  and  heard  in  his 
sleep  was,  in  reality,  his  friend  :  but  the 
6 


SOUL  SEPARATED  FROM   BODY 

appearance  could  not  have  been  that  of 
the  body  resting  in  the  grave — of  this 
early  man  was  well  assured.  Hence  it 
must  have  been  a  "  something  "  bewilder- 
ingly  like  the  dead  body,  a  second  ego,  a 
double,  and  in  a  word,  the  mysterious 
"  something  "  that  had  left  the  body  with 
the  last  breath.  Such,  in  fact,  is  the  con- 
clusion with  which  we  meet  among  primi- 
tive tribes.  Instructive  also  is  the  form  in 
which  it  appears,  in  the  words  placed  by 
Homer  in  the  mouth  of  Achilles,  when  his 
dead  friend,  Patroclus,  appears  to  him  in  a 
dream  : 

'•  Gods  !  of  a  truth,  then,  I  ween  in  the  shadowy 

houses  of  Hades 
Spirit  and  form  do  abide,  but  within  them  is  no 

understanding. 
For  in  this  selfsame  night  the  form  of  the  hapless 

Patroclus 
Hovered  above  me  and  wept  with  sore  lamentation 

and  wailing, 
Spake  his  behests,  and  marvellous  like  to  himself 

was  the  phantom." — ILIAD  xxiii,  103-107. 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

This  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  soul  that 
can  be  separated  from  the  body  is  deeply 
rooted  in  the  mind  of  man.  The  theory 
seemed  to  provide  an  explanation  of  all 
dream  experiences.  The  dreamer,  for  in- 
stance, finds  himself  in  a  distant  region 
which  he  had  visited  long  before.  His 
body  has  not  moved  from  the  couch  on 
which  he  lies  ;  it  is  therefore  his  soul  which 
has  left  him  to  renew  acquaintance  with 
that  distant  spot :  the  soul  returns  with 
the  impressions  gained  by  its  experience 
and  the  dreamer  awakes.  Such  theories 
have,  in  some  instances,  led  primitive 
tribes  (e.g.  the  Malays)  to  believe  that  it  is 
dangerous  to  wake  a  sleeping  man  ;  his 
soul  might  have  left  his  body  and  might  be 
unable  to  return  immediately,  in  which  case 
the  body  would  be  left  "  soulless/'  The 
difference  is  one  only  of  degree  :  in  sleep 
and  dreams  the  soul  leaves  the  body 
temporarily,  while  in  death  the  separation 
is  final,  an  idea  expressed  in  the  Koran  and 
8 


SOUL  SEPARATED  FROM   BODY 

there  given  a  wonderful  religious  signifi- 
cance :  "  God  takes  to  Himself  the  souls  of 
men  at  their  death  ;  and  He  takes  also  to 
Himself  the  souls  of  those  who  do  not  die, 
while  they  sleep.  He  keeps  with  Him  the 
souls  of  those  whose  death  He  has  ordained, 
but  the  others  He  sends  back  for  a  season. 
Truly  herein  lie  signs  for  thoughtful  men  to 
ponder  "  (Sura  xxxix). 

Other  psychical  phenomena  doubtless 
served  to  confirm  this  primitive  theory. 
The  word  "  ecstasy/'  for  instance,  "  a 
standing  outside  of  oneself,"  implies  the 
exit  of  the  soul  from  the  body  (cf.  2  Cor. 
xii,  2  f.). 

These  few  indications  may  serve  to  prove 
that  the  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a  separa- 
tion between  soul  and  body  was  both  vivid 
and  widely  spread.  This  belief  may  be 
regarded  as  the  first  necessary  condition 
antecedent  to  the  belief  in  metempsychosis. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  BELIEF  THAT  ORGANISMS  OTHER 
THAN   HUMAN   POSSESS  SOULS 

WE  have  stated  that  the  second  ante- 
cedent condition  was  the  belief  that 
beings  or  objects  beyond  the  limits  of  human 
life  possessed  souls  of  similar  nature.  The 
further  we  pursue  the  history  of  the  past, 
the  more  general  does  this  belief  appear. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  seek  instances  in 
remote  antiquity.  We  need  only  observe 
how  our  own  children  personify  everything 
around  them  with  their  own  characteristics. 
A  little  girl  sings  her  doll  to  sleep  as  she 
has  herself  been  sung  to  sleep  by  her  own 
mother,  and  asks  the  doll  ii?.  the  morning 
how  it  has  slept,  just  as  she  may  be  asked 
by  her  mother.  A  child  will  beat  the  stick 
that  has  tripped  it  up,  for  its  naughtiness 
which  caused  the  fall  and  deserved  punish- 

10 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

ment,  even  as  the  child's  own  shortcomings 
are  punished.  Mankind  at  large  has  enter- 
tained ideas  no  less  infantile  during  the  long 
course  of  its  development,  nor  has  it  by  any 
means  everywhere  emerged  from  the  stage 
in  which  the  individual  regards  the  objects 
about  him  as  endowed  with  souls  akin  to 
his  own. 

ANIMAL  SOULS 

Animals  are  first  regarded  as  possessing 
souls.  In  modern  histories  of  religious 
thought,  the  term  "  totemism  "  will  occa- 
sionally be  found.  The  term  is  used  to 
signify  the  belief  existing  among  Indian 
tribes  and  also  elsewhere,  that  man  is 
related  to  a  particular  species  of  animal,  or 
is  even  descended  from  it.  The  believer 
then  takes  the  name  of  his  totem  animal, 
as  we  take  our  family  names,  calls  himself 
the  bear,  the  beaver,  the  raven,  etc.,  designs 
the  animal  upon  his  weapons,  and  is  careful 
to  avoid  harming  or  killing  any  member  of 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  species.  Should  he  kill  a  totem  animal 
at  any  time,  the  act  is  performed  with  the 
most  elaborate  precautions.  If,  for  instance, 
the  Chippewa  Indians  kill  a  bear,  they 
attempt  to  justify  their  action  to  the 
victim,  put  the  pipe  of  peace  in  the  animal's 
mouth,  and  solemnly  beg  the  bear  to  forgo 
his  vengeance.  Similar  ceremonies  are 
performed  by  the  Samoyeds  in  a  far  distant 
country  and  a  wholly  different  climate. 
Such  instances,  which  might  be  infinitely 
multiplied,  prove  that  man  regards  animals 
as  possessing  souls  of  human  character,  and 
that  their  souls,  like  those  of  men,  are 
thought  to  survive  bodily  death,  and  often 
as  likely  to  become  formidable  enemies. 
Conversely,  these  souls  may  prove  useful : 
the  Arab  of  antiquity  was  buried  with  his 
.camels  ;  the  German  warrior's  charger  was 
slaughtered  at  his  grave  ;  a  noteworthy 
survival  of  this  custom  is  the  habit  of 
leading  a  dead  man's  favourite  horse  in  the 
procession  on  the  occasion  of  a  solemn 
12 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

funeral.  In  either  case  is  the  undoubted 
presence  of  a  belief  that  the  dead  man 
could  use  the  animals  for  riding  in  the  next 
world.  In  short,  as  man's  nature  is  twofold, 
and  as  the  spiritual  element  survives  on  the 
death  of  the  corporeal,  so  also  is  the  nature 
of  animals.  Moreover,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  to  men  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
civilisation  the  difference  between  man 
and  animal  is  by  no  means  so  wide  as  we 
are  accustomed  to  think  :  the  reason  is 
not  far  to  seek  ;  early  man's  occupation 
and  profession  of  nomadic  cattle  breeder 
brought  him  into  daily  and  hourly  contact 
with  his  animals  ;  he  lived  under  the  same 
roof,  or  even  in  the  same  room  with  them. 
"  Ethos,"  in  Greek,  was  once  a  term  which 
implied  association  in  one  dwelling.  It  is 
sufficiently  significant  that  our  modern 
word,  "  ethics,"  seems  to  be  derived  from 
ethos  as  a  comprehensive  term  for  the 
first  rules  which  governed  the  intercourse 
of  man  with  the  other  inmates  of  his  house. 
13 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

In  any  case,  in  simpler  ages  man  regarded 
his  animals  as  no  less  members  of  society 
than  his  comrades  and  friends  ;  the  Indian 
talks  to  his  horse,  and  the  Arab  to  his 
camel.  "  Even  the  cattle  understand  what 
is  spoken  in  words,"  is  a  saying  in  the 
famous  Indian  collection  of  fairy  tales,  the 
Pancatantra.  Nor  did  a  less  sophisticated 
age  than  ours  find  anything  surprising  in 
the  idea  that  animals  could  occasionally 
use  human  language,  or  at  least  a  language 
immediately  intelligible  to  man.  Animals 
occasionally  appear  as  announcing  immi- 
nent danger  or  good  fortune,  for  they  have 
knowledge  of  much  that  man  cannot  even 
suspect.  We  usually  relegate  animal  lan- 
guage to  the  region  of  fables  and  fairy  tales  : 
for  instance,  in  the  tale  of  the  Sleeping 
Beauty,  a  frog  jumps  out  of  the  water, 
speaks  to  the  queen  who  is  longing  for  a 
child,  and  promises  that  her  wish  shall  be 
fulfilled. 

Similar  examples  might  be  quoted  with- 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

out  end.  But  we  must  remember  that  as 
the  vein  of  gold  gleams  in  the  heart  of  the 
rock,  so  the  features  characteristic  of  these 
stories  are  but  fragments  from  the  infinite 
storehouse  of  popular  beliefs.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  close  connection  and  intercourse 
between  men  and  animals  has  not  been 
without  effect  upon  the  latter  :  the  more 
man  associates  with  them,  the  nearer  do  they 
approach  him  on  the  intellectual  side  ;  we 
may  realise  the  fact  by  comparing  the  dog 
in  European  civilisation  with  the  dog  in  the 
East,  where  he  is  avoided  as  an  unclean 
animal.  Thus  it  is  natural  that  increased 
association  with  animals  should  increase 
belief  in  their  kinship  with  man  and  in  the 
similarity  of  their  souls  to  his.  This  ancient 
idea  finds  wonderfully  poetic  and  yet  most 
realistic  expression  in  Ibsen's  "  Sea  Woman/' 
When  Wangel  asks  his  wife  on  what  subject 
she  has  been  continually  talking  with 
"  the  strange  man/'  she  replies,  "  We  spoke 
chiefly  of  the  sea  ...  of  storm  and  calm, 
'5 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

of  dark  nights  upon  the  sea.  We  also 
spoke  of  the  sea  on  bright  sunlight  days. 
But  for  the  most  part  we  spoke  of  the 
whales  and  dolphins,  and  of  the  seals  which 
usually  lie  out  there  upon  the  rocks  in  the 
heat  of  the  day.  And  then,  you  know,  we 
spoke  of  the  gulls  and  eagles  and  other  sea- 
birds.  And  I  tell  you,  is  it  not  strange  ? 
When  we  spoke  of  these  things,  it  seemed 
to  me  as  if  all  of  them,  sea-animals  and  sea- 
birds,  were  related  to  him."  "  And  you 
also  ?  "  asks  Wangel.  And  his  wife  replies, 
"  Yes,  it  seemed  as  if  I  also  was  kin  to  them 
all !  "  Hebbel  has  expressed  a  similar  belief 
with  no  less  art  in  his  "  Nibelungen,"  in  the 
words  he  gives  to  the  serpent. 

"  On  him  that  is  outcast  and  scorned  of  men, 
Denied  by  his  own  brethren  and  betrayed, 
Do  thou  bestow  protection,  and  recall 
Kinship  as  ancient  as  the  world  itself." 

Something  of  this   "  ancient  kinship/'   to- 
gether  with   other  primitive   features,  has 
been  transferred,  as  is  well  known,  to  the 
16 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

millennium  by  Israelitish  prophecy,  in  such 
passages  as  Hosea  ii,  18 ;  Isa.  xi,  6  ff. 
and  elsewhere. 

PLANT  SOULS 

Animals  thus  have  souls  akin  to  those  of 
men  :  so  also,  in  the  belief  of  primitive  man, 
have  plants,  trees,  shrubs,  flowers,  etc. 
For  this  reason,  for  instance,  in  Silesia  the 
death  of  the  master  of  the  house  is  announced 
not  only  to  the  cattle  in  the  stalls,  and  to 
the  bees  in  the  hive,  but  also  to  the  trees  in 
the  garden  arid  to  the  corn  in  the  barns. 
Language  has  also  preserved  something  of 
the  old  belief.  Even  in  scientific  works 
plants  are  said  to  "  breathe  "  ;  in  other 
words,  to  perform  just  that  function  the 
exercise  of  which  provided  early  man  with 
visible  proof  of  his  belief  in  the  existence 
of  the  soul.  We  are  all  accustomed  to  say 
that  a  vine  "  weeps  "  or  "  bleeds  "  when  it 
has  been  cut.  We  remember  the  question 
of  the  little  Walter  Tell, 
c  17 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

"  Father,  the  trees  upon  the  mountain  side, 
Do  they  in  truth  shed  blood,  when  the  bright  axe 
Has  cleft  their  bark?" 

Thus  a  belief  was  actually  current  at 
Nauders  in  Tyrol  fifty  years  ago  that  a 
certain  kind  of  larch  tree  bled  when  it  was 
felled.  The  Indian  legal  code  of  Manu 
forbids  the  use  of  red  resin,  apparently,  as 
has  been  stated,  because  it  was  thought  to 
be  coagulated  blood,  which  was  no  more  to 
be  tasted  than  any  other  kind  of  blood. 
(There  was  a  widespread  belief — instances 
may  be  found,  for  example,  in  the  Old 
Testament — that  the  soul  was  inherent  in 
the  blood  as  well  as  in  the  breath  :  the  soul 
appears  to  depart  from  the  body  when 
the  blood  streams  from  a  mortal  wound.) 
There  is  a  belief  current  in  Berg  that  a 
certain  orchis  gives  a  piteous  cry  when  torn 
out  of  the  ground.  But  the  mysterious 
rustling  of  leaves  in  the  wind  is  especially 
regarded  as  the  language  of  the  tree,  which 
would  be  silent  if  it  were  not  in  some  way 
inhabited  by  a  soul.  Speaking  trees  are 
18 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

common  among  the  most  various  nations, 
the  Zulus  and  the  Greeks,  the  Scandi- 
navians and  the  Babylonians,  etc.  Among 
the  Germans  the  power  of  understanding 
their  language  is  part  of  the  poetic  faculty. 
But  poets  are  merely  the  heirs  of  those 
divinely  gifted  persons  born  under  a  happy 
star,  who  have  been  invariably  thought  by 
popular  belief  to  have  ears  for  the  message 
told  by  the  rustling  of  the  leaves.  Even  in 
modern  superstition — and  the  superstition 
of  to-day  was  the  belief  of  yesterday — 
female  curiosity  occasionally  applies  to  a 
tree  spirit  or  dryad  for  valuable  informa- 
tion. In  Franconia,  on  St.  Thomas'  Day^ 
the  girls  go  to  a  tree,  knock  upon  it  three 
times  with  due  solemnity,  and  listen  for 
answering  knocks  within  telling  them  what/ 
sort  of  husbands  they  will  get.  The  tree 
spirits  are  widely  believed  to  possess  know- 
ledge of  all  kinds  of  secret  matters.  The 
poet's  assertion,  however, 

"  This  would  I  gladly  carve  on  every  stem," 
19 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

gives  a  wrong  idea  of  the  spirit's  inoffensive- 
ness.  Greater  caution  is  necessary  :  many 
a  Greek  or  Indian  legend  relates  how  the 
tree  spirit  betrayed  secrets  confided  to  it. 
Even  to-day  the  belief  is  well  known  that 
the  cracking  of  wooden  wall  panels  is  a 
sign  of  an  approaching  death,  a  belief  pro- 
ceeding from  the  same  idea  that  the  tree 
spirit  is  ever  ready  to  reveal  to  man  its 
knowledge  of  the  future  which  is  hidden 
from  man.  But  this  spirit  has  the  faculty  of 
belief  as  well  as  of  knowledge.  Tradition 
represents  Mohammed  as  saying  of  trees, 
"  Some  of  them  are  believers,  others  are 
unfaithful."  Finally,  experience  must  have 
taught  man  from  the  earliest  ages  that  the 
consumption  of  such  plants,  for  instance, 
as  contain  opium  produced  a  certain  mental 
excitement,  for  which  he  could  only  account 
by  assuming  the  operation  of  a  soul  or 
spirit.  Hence  he  inferred  that  the  soul  or 
spirit  was  primarily  incarnate  in  the  plant 
which  he  had  eaten.  The  expressions  of  this 

20 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

belief  remain  to  us,  though  their  original 
meaning  has  been  changed  :  we  speak  of 
"  spirits  of  wine/'  the  French,  of  "  esprit  de 
vin,"  and  the  Germans,  of  the  "  Weingeist." 
The  strength  and  growth  of  a  plant  depend 
upon  the  soul  incarnate  within  it.  The 
Karenes  in  Further  India  have  a  special 
form  of  invocation  adapted  to  cases  when 
their  rice  fields  fail :  "  Oh,  come,  Rice- 
kelah  (spirit),  come  !  Come  into  the  field  ! 
Come  to  the  rice  !  Come  from  the  west, 
come  from  the  east !  Come  from  the  throat 
of  the  bird,  from  the  pouches  of  the  ape, 
from  the  throat  of  the  elephant.  .  .  .  Come 
from  all  the  barns.  Oh,  Rice-kelah,  come 
the  rice."  As  intended  to  secure  the  return 
of  the  soul,  this  invocation  corresponds 
precisely  with  the  form  of  expression  which 
we  apply  to  human  beings  :  "he  recovered, 
and  came  to  himself/' 


21 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

SOULS   IN  OTHER  MATERIAL  OBJECTS 

The  belief  in  plant  souls  is  more  intellig- 
ible to  us  than  the  belief  that  objects  which 
we  regard  as  entirely  inanimate  possess 
souls.  Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  these 
beliefs  were  equally  prevalent  among  primi- 
tive tribes.  In  any  case,  there  is  every 
reason  for  the  existence  of  this  idea,  if  our 
explanation  is  correct,  which  stated  that  man 
was  chiefly  led  to  the  conception  of  soul- 
life  by  his  dream  experiences.  In  dreams 
he  sees  many  objects  far  remote  from  his 
sleeping  place,  as  he  may  easily  convince 
himself  in  waking  moments  :  hence,  these 
things  as  seen  in  dreams  must  be  the 
mysterious  doubles  of  their  realities. 
Weapons,  as  is  generally  known,  are  laid 
in  the  grave  with  dead  warriors  that  the 
dead  may  have  them  for  their  journey  into 
the  beyond,  or  to  the  Elysian  fields.  It  is 
immediately  obvious  that  the  uncivilised 
man  who  buries  these  objects  does  not 
22 


ORGANISMS  POSSESS  SOULS 

imagine  that  the  implements  which  he  lays 
in  the  grave  can  leave  it  and  accompany 
their  owner  into  the  next  world  :  it  is,  so 
to  speak,  only  the  souls  of  these  objects 
which  follow  the  dead  man.  But  this  idea 
is  not  confined  to  uncivilised  man.  In 
ancient  Athens,  with  its  famous  culture, 
if  a  man  was  killed  by  a  falling  stone,  a 
special  court  was  held  to  pass  sentence  upon 
the  offending  object,  which  was  condemned 
and  transported  beyond  the  frontier  !  Such 
action  is  only  explicable  upon  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  stone  was  believed  to  have  a 
soul.  In  any  case,  these  examples  will 
suffice  to  explain  what  I  have  termed  the 
second  idea  necessarily  antecedent  to  a 
belief  in  metempsychosis,  the  idea  that 
organisms  other  than  human,  and  even 
objects  which  we  regard  as  inanimate,  may 
possess  souls  after  the  manner  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  BELIEF  IN  THE  TRANSMIGRATION 

OF  SOULS   FROM   ONE  BEING 

TO  ANOTHER 

TRANSMIGRATION   FROM   MAN  TO  MAN 

WE  now  proceed  to  consider  the  third 
"antecedent  idea/'  the  idea  that 
the  soul  of  one  being  may  be  transferred  to 
another  being,  and  thus  we  are  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  subject  of  our  enquiry. 
Evidence  for  the  existence  of  this  belief  may 
be  found,  for  instance,  in  the  well-known 
Roman  custom  which  obliged  the  nearest 
relation  to  bend  over  the  face  of  a  dying 
^man  in  order  to  catch  his  last  breath,  in 
other  words,  his  soul.  A  similar  custom  is 
said  to  have  existed  among  a  tribe  in 
Florida  (North  America)  ;  if  a  woman  died 
in  child-birth,  the  child  was  held  over  her 
face  so  that  it  might  breathe  in  the  soul  as 
24 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

it  left  her  lips.  Among  the  same  tribe 
pregnant  women  were  accustomed  to  go 
and  meet  funeral  processions  in  the  hope 
of  receiving  within  themselves  the  soul  of 
the  deceased,  for  the  benefit  of  the  unborn 
child  :  the  Algonquin  Indians  used  to  bury 
the  bodies  of  children  by  the  roadside  that 
their  souls  might  enter  the  bodies  of  passing 
women  and  so  be  born  again.  For  the  same 
reason  the  Calabaris,  the  finest  and  most/ 
highly  civilised  negroes  of  the  slave  coast, 
buried  their  dead  in  their  houses  ;  the  soul 
of  a  dead  man  thus  buried  was  thought  to 
pass  into  the  child  that  was  next  born  in  the 
house.  The  belief  that  the  soul  of  a  dead 
man  reappears  in  a  child  is  widely  spread. 
It  is  possible  that  some  trace  of  it  existed 
even  among  the  ancient  Babylonians.  On 
this  belief  the  Tibetans  certainly  base  the 
principle  of  succession  to  the  supreme 
spiritual  dignity ;  on  the  death  of  the 
Dalai-Lama,  a  child  born  nine  months 
afterwards  is  chosen  as  his  successor,  and  is 
25 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

naturally  regarded  as  a  child  of  the  same 
spirit  as  the  deceased.  This,  indeed,  is  the 
essential  point  of  the  belief  in  the  trans- 
migration of  the  soul  from  man  to  man ; 
the  belief  explains  the  reason  for  an  intellec- 
tual or  physical  likeness  between  two  men, 
and  in  particular  the  reason  for  family 
likenesses.  Among  the  Khonds,  an  aborigi- 
nal Indian  tribe,  a  birth  is  celebrated  seven 
days  after  its  occurrence  by  a  festival  at 
which  the  priest  examines  the  body  of  the 
| child,  and  states  which  of  the  family 
'ancestors  has  been  reborn  in  it :  the  child 
is  then  named  after  this  ancestor.  The 
naming  of  children,  in  fact,  is  in  many  ways 
connected  with  the  belief  that  the  souls  of 
ancestors  return  to  life  in  the  children.  In 
INew  Zealand,  for  instance,  the  priests 
stand  before  a  new-born  child  and  repeat 
a  long  list  of  ancestral  names  until  the 
child  sneezes  or  cries  out  at  one  of  them  : 
the  ancestor  is  thus  found  whose  soul  is  re- 
incarnated in  the  child  and  after  whom  the 
26 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

child  is  then  named.  A  very  similar  custom 
exists  in  Little  Popo  in  colonial  West  Africa  : 
when  a  child  is  born  the  parents  consult 
the  oracle  by  means  of  sixteen  date-stones, 
in  order  to  discover  whether  a  soul  from 
the  mother's  or  father's  side  of  the  family 
is  reincarnate  in  the  child,  and  which  soul 
it  is.  The  reply  of  the  oracle  determines 
the  name  of  the  child,  who  thus  receives 
the  name  of  the  ancestor  whose  soul  is  sup- 
posed to  have  returned  again  to  earth. 
Not  until  their  conversion  to  Christianity 
do  we  find  that  the  ancient  Germans  gave 
a  child  the  name  of  a  living  relative  ;  in 
earlier  times  the  name  of  a  dead  man  was 
always  chosen,  and  especially  of  a  dead 
father,  as  he  was  supposed  to  continue  his 
life  in  his  child.  In  Dahomey,  if  a  child 
was  born  with  a  complete  set  of  teeth, 
the  chief  magician  explained  the  event  as 
being  a  reincarnation  of  the  king,  who  had 
returned  to  devour  his  son,  and  the  child 
was  drowned.  The  famous  Australian 
27 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

traveller,  George  Grey,  relates  that  he  was 
once  caressed  by  an  old  woman  who  thought 
that  she  had  found  a  deceased  son  in  him, 
and  shed  tears  over  him.  Here  a  further 
[feature  appears :  savages  often  believe 
« white  men  to  be  merely  reincarnated  mem- 
bers of  their  own  race.  "  Who  dies  a  black 
man  rises  again  a  white  man/'  is  said  to  be 
a  common  saying  among  the  aborigines  of 
Australia. 

I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  the  unpleasant 
question,  whether  the  motive  of  cannibalism 
is  a  similar  belief,  in  distorted  form,  that 
intellectual  powers  may  be  transmitted 
from  man  to  man  by  a  transmigration  of  the 
soul ;  the  theory  of  the  cannibal  being  that 
the  conqueror  who  devours  his  defeated 
foe  thus  appropriates  the  strength,  courage, 
dexterity,  etc.,  which  lived  in  the  soul  of  his 
enemy.  This  indication  of  the  belief  will 
suffice. 


28 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

THE   TRANSMIGRATION   OF   SOULS   FROM 
MEN   TO  ANIMALS 

In  every  case  hitherto  discussed  we  saw 
that  the  human  soul  after  death  was 
thought  to  pass  into  another  human  body. 
The  soul  can,  however,  choose  a  body  with 
no  similarity  to  its  original  home.  This 
belief  in  reincarnation  under  various  forms 
may  have  been  suggested  by  the  facts  of 
nature  as  observed  by  primitive  man,  who 
must,  for  instance,  have  noticed  how  the 
caterpillar  became  a  butterfly.  Why  should 
not  man  undergo  a  similar  change  ? 

"  We  are  but  worms 
Born  to  become  celestial  butterflies," 

says  Dante.  It  seems  again  that  men's 
minds  were  occupied  in  early  times  by  the 
thought  expressed  by  St.  Paul  in  the 
words,  "  That  which  thou  sowest,  thou 
sowest  not  that  body  which  shall  be,  but 
bare  grain,  it  may  be  of  wheat  or  of  some 
other  grain,  but  God  gives  it  a  body  as  it 
29 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

pleases  Him  "  (i  Cor.  xv,  37  f.).  Seeing  that 
primitive  man  was  unable  to  draw  a  clear 
line  of  distinction  between  the  worlds  of 
men  and  of  animals,  we  can  hardly  feel 
surprised  at  the  universality  of  the  belief 
that  the  human  soul  can  be  reincarnated  in 
animals.  Instances  are  legion.  Every 
reader  will  recall  the  constant  transforma- 
tions of  men  into  animals  in  classical  myth- 
ology or  in  Grimm's  fairy  tales.  Magicians 
and  witches  have  a  special  power  of  assuming 
animal  forms  themselves,  or  of  thus  trans- 
forming others,  perhaps  ultimately  to  re- 
store their  original  shapes.  These  temporary 
transformations  or  "  metamorphoses  "  do 
not,  however,  specially  concern  us  here. 
They  are  of  interest  merely  as  proving  the 
ease  with  which  simple  imaginative  powers 
can  accept  the  possibility  of  transformation 
from  one  to  another  form  of  life.  Our  point 
is  much  rather  the  reason  for  the  belief  that 
the  human  soul  could  pass  into  another 
species  of  body  after  death. 
30 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

Here  we  may  again  refer  to  Dante's 
phrase  above  mentioned,  the  "  celestial 
butterfly/'  In  the  plastic  arts  this  idea 
had  long  been  a  commonplace.  In  ancient/ 
Greece  representations  of  the  soul  as  a\ 
butterfly  are  common  enough.  How  far 
the  Greeks  regarded  these  merely  as  pictorial 
or  typical  representations,  how  far,  that  is, 
they  regarded  the  soul  as  actually  incarnate 
in  the  winged  insect,  is  a  question  that  will 
naturally  occur  to  us.  As  regards  antiquity, 
it  is  hardly  a  suitable  question,  for  it  may 
be  said  in  general  that  the  ancient  world 
was  unable  to  make  that  distinction  between 
the  symbolical  and  the  actual  which  is 
perfectly  familiar  to  modern  thought.  (This 
observation,  it  may  be  said,  will  also  apply 
to  Matt,  xxvi,  26.)  Anyone  who  now  looks 
at  the  mosaic  butterflies  on  the  ascent  to 
the  Campo  Santo  at  Florence  will  at  once 
realise  that  these  butterflies  are  not  copies, 
but  types  of  the  human  soul  after  death.; 
In  one  Irish  district  popular  belief  actually 
31 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

regards  the  souls  of  "the  grandfathers'1  as 
incarnate  in  the  butterflies :  in  Sweden 
the  name  for  butterfly  is  "  old  woman's 
soul/'  In  Germany  there  is  a  saying  that 
children  before  birth  fly  about  with  the 
butterflies.  The  conception  of  the  soul  in 
the  form  of  a  butterfly  readily  leads  to  the 
very  widespread  belief  that  souls  take  the 
form  of  birds.  The  Iroquois  of  North 
(America,  for  instance,  release  a  bird  upon 
the  evening  of  a  burial,  in  the  belief  that  it 
will  become  the  home  of  the  soul ;  other 
instances  of  this  custom  are  numerous, 
though  it  is  impossible  to  determine  in 
every  case  whether  these  soul-birds  do 
more  than  typify  the  departure  and  the 
upward  journey  of  the  liberated  soul.  The 
ancient  Egyptians,  for  instance,  placed 
soul-birds  with  their  dead,  though  they  did 
toot  believe  that  their  life  in  the  next  world 
was  to  continue  under  the  form  of  birds.  A 
curious  point  is  also  that  the  bird  was 
invariably  a  cock  :  the  dwellers  in  the  next 
32 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

world  were  regarded  as  male  without  excep- 
tion, even  if  they  had  been  women  in  this 
world.  In  Finnish  the  name  for  the  milky 
way  is  the  "  way  of  birds  "  :  the  souls  of 
the  dead  are  apparently  thought  to  fly 
along  the  milky  way  into  the  next  world 
in  the  form  of  birds.  In  the  story  of  Cin- 
derella we  remember  the  white  bird  which 
sits  upon  the  tree  over  her  mother's  grave 
and  throws  down  whatever  she  desires. 
The  white  bird  may  be  regarded  as  the 
soul  of  the  mother  in  bird-form  :  in  fact, 
the  mother  had  promised  on  her  death-bed 
to  stay  with  Cinderella  and  help  her.  In 
Venice,  among  the  famous  pigeons  in  the 
Square  of  St.  Mark,  is  a  particular  white 
bird,  which  is  said  to  be  the  soul  of  Daniele 
Manin,  the  great  patriot,  whom  the  gondo- 
liers call  their  father.  This  white  pigeon  is 
said  to  return  every  year  and  to  fly  over  the 
piazza  di  San  Marco  at  midnight  to  behold  , 
its  beloved  Venice.  In  Cornwall,  on  the 
other  hand,  King  Arthur  is  said  to  live  in 
D  33 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  form  of  a  raven.  There  is  a  kindlier 
legend  in  the  Irish  district  of  Mayo  which 
believes  that  the  souls  of  maidens  become 
Nreincarnate  in  swans.  However,  in  the 
wild  Gieritz  swamp  on  the  Aar,  in  Switzer- 
land, old  maids  become  plovers.  The 
Samoan  islanders  prefer  smaller  creatures  : 
should  an  islander  be  killed  in  battle  or 
drowned  his  friends  and  relations  sit  down, 
spread  out  a  cloth  before  them,  call  upon  the 
gods,  and  wait  for  some  insect  to  crawl  upon 
the  cloth.  When  an  ant,  cricket,  or  some 
insect  of  the  kind  appears  it  is  regarded  as 
the  soul  of  the  young  man,  and  is  buried 
with  all  due  solemnity.  If  no  insect  appears 
it  is  assumed  that  the  spirit  is  angry  with 
the  watchers,  others  take  their  places,  and 
an  insect  naturally  appears  sooner  or  later. 

The  soul  shows  a  particular  preference 
for  the  form  of  the  snake.  In  this  form  it 
can  even  leave  the  body  during  sleep : 
an  instance  is  the  story  of  King  Guntram, 
which  throws  much  light  upon  primitive 
34 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

ideas  concerning  the  soul.  One  day  the 
king  went  to  sleep  upon  the  breast  of  his 
faithful  servant.  The  servant  then  saw  a 
little  creature  like  a  snake  crawl  out  of  his 
master's  mouth  and  go  towards  a  brook, 
which  it  could  not  cross.  The  servant 
placed  his  sword  over  the  water  ;  the  reptile 
crossed  and  went  into  a  mountain  on  the 
other  side.  After  some  time  it  returned  to 
the  sleeper  the  same  way,  who  soon  woke 
and  said  that  in  his  dream  he  had  crossed 
an  iron  bridge  and  entered  a  mountain  full 
of  gold.  As  the  counterpart  of  this  story 
we  may  quote  Virgil's  description  of  the 
visit  of  ^Eneas  to  his  father's  grave.  ^Eneas, 
in  due  performance  of  pious  custom,  had 
poured  libations  to  the  dead  of  wine,  milk, 
and  blood,  had  strewn  flowers  and  called 
upon  him  : 

"  Then  from  the  depths  of  the  shrine  came  smoothly 

gliding  a  serpent, 

Winding  its  mighty  length  in  sevenfold  circles  en- 
twined ; 

35 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

Slowly  it  circled  the  tomb  and  wound  its  way  to 

the  altars, 
Azure  bedight  was  its  back  and  the  spangled  scales 

of  the  portent 
Glittered  with  verdant  gold,  as  the  bow  after  rain 

in  the  heavens 
Gleams  with  a  thousand  hues  beneath  the  touch  of 

the  sunbeam. 
Silent,  amazed  stood  ^neas  ;  but  the  serpent,  its 

long  length  trailing, 
Glided  among  the  cups  and  the  polished  vessels  of 

service, 
Tasted  the  viands  and  back  to  the  depths  of  the 

tomb  receded, 
Mindless  of  harm  and  left  the  tasted  food  and  the 

altars."— ^ENEID  V,  84-93. 

Greek  vase  paintings  frequently  represent 
the  occupants  of  graves  in  the  form  of 
snakes.  This  does  not  imply  the  belief 
that  the  dead  continued  to  live  permanently 
in  serpent  form,  but  merely  that  their  souls 
could  become  visible  in  this  form  from  time 
i  to  time.  Zulu  simplicity,  on  the  other  hand, 
regards  the  snake-form  as  permanent :  if  a 
snake  appears  with  a  scar  on  one  side  a 
man  may  come  who  knew  some  inhabitant 
of  the  place  thus  marked  in  his  life-time 
36 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

and  say,  "  That  is  So-and-so.  Do  you  not 
see  the  scar  on  his  side  ?  "  That  primitive 
man  regarded  the  serpent  as  an  uncanny, 
supernatural  creature  is  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge.  This  is  probably  the  chief 
reason  for  regarding  the  serpent  as  the 
form  in  which  the  souls  of  the  dead  con- 
tinued their  existence  :  for  fear  is  the  first 
feeling  that  inspires  man's  relations  with 
the  dead,  as  may  be  proved  from  many 
sources.  It  should  also  be  remembered 
that  in  many  countries  snakes  are  fond  of 
entering  houses  and  approaching  the  fire- 
side, as  though  they  were  driven  by  some 
natural  instinct  to  seek  human  association. 
Legend  often  represents  the  house-snake  as 
playing  with  the  child  of  the  house,  as 
sharing  food  and  drink  with  him,  sleeping 
in  his  cradle  and  giving  him  health  :  but 
the  snake  must  not  be  angered,  or  evil  will 
fall  upon  the  household. 

The   belief    is   widely  disseminated  that 
human    souls    are    incarnate    in    animals 
37 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

which  make  their  homes  in  men's  houses, 
even  when  they  are  unwelcome  visitors. 
The  mouse,  for  instance,  very  often  appears 
as  the  reincarnation  of  a  soul.  The  soul 
can  leave  the  body  of  a  sleeper  in  the  form 
of  a  mouse  as  well  as  in  that  of  a  snake, 
to  return  after  a  while  to  the  body  :  the 
mouse  is  a  form  more  regularly  assumed 
after  death.  In  the  year  914  there  was  a 
great  famine,  and  Bishop  Hatto  of  Mayence 
gathered  the  poor  who  had  nothing  to  eat 
into  a  barn  and  burnt  them :  then  a  swarm 
of  mice  suddenly  came  out  of  the  fire — these 
were,  of  course,  the  souls  of  the  unfortunate 
people  demanding  vengeance — and  pursued 
the  bishop  day  and  night.  He  fled  to  a 
tower  in  the  middle  of  the  Rhine  at  Bingen 
to  escape  his  foes,  but  they  swam  the  stream 
and  devoured  him,  whence  his  tower  is 
known  as  the  "  mouse-tower  "  even  to-day. 
Mice  also  have  their  patron  saint,  St. 
Gertrude,  who  is  represented  in  the  Carin- 
thian's  peasant  calendar  as  a  spinning 
38 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

woman,  with  mice  and  rats  running  up  her 
distaff.  The  explanation  of  so  strange  an 
attribute  of  the  saint  is  simply  this  :  Ger- 
trude was  formerly  one  of  the  war  Valkyries, 
and  souls  spent  their  first  night  after  death 
with  her  :  thus  the  mice  depicted  with  the 
saint  are  merely  the  reincarnated  souls  of 
the  deceased.  Hence  the  saying  "  to 
whistle  to  mice  is  to  call  the  souls  of  the 
dead  "  :  we  may  compare  the  legend  of 
the  piper  of  Hameln.  Arab  superstition" 
regards  a  particular  species  of  mouse  as 
inhabited  by  the  souls  of  an  extinct  Israel- 
itish  tribe  :  hence  these  mice  will  not  touch 
camel's  milk,  which  was  forbidden  to  thq 
Israelites.  Together  with  the  mouse,  men- 
tion may  also  be  made  of  toads,  which  in 
Tyrol,  for  instance,  may  not  be  killed  on 
All  Souls'  Day,  "  because  poor  souls  are  in 
them  "  ;  they  also,  like  poor  souls,  make 
pilgrimages  to  chapels  on  quarter  days. 

Certain  uncanny  creatures  which  fly  by 
night  are  often  regarded  as  the  habitations 
39 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

of  souls  ;  such  are  the  owl,  the  bat,  and 
especially  the  vampire,  which  has  a  particu- 
larly evil  reputation  for  sucking  the  warm 
blood  from  the  living  and  leaving  them 
pale  and  dying.  The  so-called  vampire 
legend  is  to  be  found  chiefly  among  the 
Slav  races.  The  Abipones,  an  Indian  tribe 
in  the  Argentine,  have  a  less  repulsive 
belief,  to  the  effect  that  the  souls  of  the  dead 
become  incarnate  in  a  certain  species  of 
duck,  which  flies  about  at  night  uttering 
melancholy  wails.  The  mournful  effect  of 
these  cries  is  the  reason  in  this  case  for 
assuming  a  connection  between  these  birds 
and  the  souls  of  the  dead.  Mohammed 
refused  to  eat  lizards  because  he  regarded 
them  as  the  descendants  of  an  Israelitish 
tribe  which  had  undergone  this  metamor- 
v^phosis  :  the  Zulus  also  believe  that  the 
souls  of  the  dead  can  pass  into  lizards.  More 
intelligible  is  the  idea  that  souls  enter 
animals  resembling  man  in  form  :  in  Guinea, 
souls  are  thought  to  enter  the  bodies  of  the 
40 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

apes  which  live  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
burial  places.  The  general  respect  and 
fear  of  the  dead  is  expressed  in  the  belief 
that  their  souls  inhabit  the  bodies  of  animals 
of  imposing  appearance :  tigers,  lions,  bears, 
wolves,  even  crocodiles  and  whales.  But 
almost  any  animal  may  be  so  inhabited. 
When  the  head  of  a  great  fish  was  placed 
on  the  table  before  Theodoric,  King  of  the 
Ostrogoths,  in  his  palace  at  Ravenna,  he 
cried  trembling,  "  That  is  Symmachus  (who 
had  been  executed  by  his  orders)  ;  he/ 
wishes  to  devour  me."  He  then  fell  ill  and 
died.  An  Icelandic  legend  relates  that 
Pharaoh's  servants  who  were  drowned  in 
the  Red  Sea  continue  to  live  beneath  the 
sea  in  the  form  of  seals.  On  the  eve  of  St. 
John  they  are  allowed  to  resume  their 
human  shape,  and  come  to  land  dancing 
and  singing  joyfully.  If  anyone  can  take 
away  their  seal  skins,  he  has  them  in  his 
power,  and  they  remain  in  the  form  of 
men. 

41 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

In  some   instances   the  various  kinds  of 
animals   are   differentiated.     Those  hostile 
to  man  are  regarded  as  inhabited  by  the 
souls  of  enemies,  while  the  inoffensive  con- 
tain the  souls  of  members  of  the  tribe.  Thus 
'Hie  Tlascalans  of  Mexico  believe  that  the 
Aouls  of  distinguished  men  enter  great  and 
sweet-singing  birds  and  the  nobler  quadru- 
peds, while  the  souls  of  common  people  pass 
^into   weasels,   beetles,  etc.      Similarly,  the 
tribes  of  Madagascar  believe  that  the  species 
of  animal  to  be  inhabited  by  the  soul  is 
determined  by  the  rank  which  the  deceased 
man  held  during  his  lifetime. 

SOUL-TRANSMIGRATION   FROM  MEN  TO 
PLANTS 

After   death   the  human   soul  can   pass 

into  plants  as  well  as  into  animals.     The 

soul  seems  to  show  a  particular  preference 

for  the  bean.    Hence  the  Pythagoreans  were 

.forbidden  to  eat  beans.     "  To  eat  beans  is 

to  eat  the  heads  of  one's  parents  "  was  a 

42 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

Pythagorean  saying,  which  was  intended 
to  be  literally  interpreted.  Horace  pours 
full  measure  of  satire  upon  Pythagoras,  the 
"  relative  "  of  the  bean,  in  reference  to  a 
succulent  country  dish  of  beans  (Satire  II, 
vi,  63  ff.).  The  black  marks  in  the  bean 
flower  were  interpreted  by  the  Greeks  as 
Ai,  Ai,  the  cry  of  sorrow ;  a  similar  sign 
was  found  by  them  in  the  hyacinth,  which 
flower  was  also  regarded  as  an  incarnation. 
At  the  same  time  the  bean  had  an  evil 
reputation  as  causing  bad  dreams.  Beans, 
in  fact,  have  a  history  of  their  own  :  the 
Romans  had  a  similar  belief  concerning 
them  ;  they  thought  that  they  drove  away 
evil  spirits  by  throwing  beans  behind  them./ 
This  may  remind  us  of  a  feast  which  the 
Japanese  celebrate  on  the  evening  of  Feb- 
ruary 25  at  the  parting  of  winter  and  spring. 
They  try  to  drive  out  malicious  spirits  by 
strewing  roasted  beans  and  exclaiming : 
"Come  in,  happiness,  go  away,  devil  !"/•- 
Egyptian  priests  were  not  even  allowed  to 
43 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

look  at  beans.  At  any  rate,  we  know  that 
he  "  who  is  in  the  beans  "  is  absent-minded, 
i.e.  that  as  beans  can  contain  the  soul  of 
the  dead,  so  they  can  hold  the  mind  of  a 
living  man.  There  is  much  evidence  to  show 
that  All  Souls'  Day  and  the  spring  festival 
originally  fell  upon  the  same  day.  The 
spring  festival  in  Malta,  for  instance,  and  on 
the  Rhine,  was  therefore  kept  as  a  bean 
festival.  It  was  a  time  of  rejoicing.  A  bean 
queen,  the  feminine  counterpart  of  Prince 
Carnival,  was  chosen,  and  cheerful,  licentious 
songs  were  sung  ;  hence  the  origin  of  the 
German  expression  that  any  licentious  and 
outrageous  act  "  surpasses  the  bean-song/' 
Apart  from  leguminous  plants,  any  tree 
or  shrub  may  receive  the  passing  soul.  The 
Dyaks  of  Borneo,  for  instance,  believe  that 
the  sap,  with  its  resemblance  to  blood,  is  due 
to  this  cause,  and  for  similar  reasons  certain 
tribes  in  Australia  or  the  Philippines  refuse 
to  fell  trees.  In  this  connection  must  be 
taken  the  numerous  stories  of  transforma- 
44 


FROM   BEING  TO   BEING 

tions  to  trees  in  classical  mythology  ;  such 
as  that  of  Philemon  and  Baucis,  who  were 
transformed  upon  death  into  an  oak  and  a 
lime  tree  respectively.  Comparatively  re- 
cently the  two  sacred  trees  were  shown, 
protected  by  a  wall  from  the  profane  world. 
A  large  number  of  similar  legends  and 
stories  are  current,  such  as  the  wonderful 
old  folk-song  : 

"  They  buried  him  in  Mary's  church 
And  her  in  Mary's  nave, 
And  over  her  a  red  rose  grew 
And  a  white  thorn  from  his  grave  : 
They  bent  to  one  another, 
Entwined  their  branches  fair, 
For  every  passer-by  to  see 
Two  lovers  rested  there." 

More  elaborate  is  the  Portuguese  story  (3s 
Count  Nello,  from  whose  grave  a  cypress 
grew,  while  an  orange  tree  blossomed  upon 
the  grave  of  his  lady-love,  the  Infanta. 
The  King,  who  had  opposed  their  marriage, 
ordered  the  trees  to  be  cut  down.  But 
blood  flowed  from  their  stems  and  two 
45 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

white  doves  flew  out  and  away  to  the  King, 
as  he  was  sitting  down  to  meat,  so  that  he 
burst  out  with  a  cry,  "  Curse  your  love, 
curse  it :  neither  in  life  nor  in  death  can  I 
\divide  you/' 

Such  beliefs  are  now  regarded  as  nothing 
more  than  poetical  ideas,  but  in  the  far 
distant  day  of  primitive  speculation,  from 
which  poets  have  transmitted  these  stories 
to  us,  they  were  considered  to  be  matters  of 
fact.  So  much  is  plainly  obvious  from  time 
to  time  even  through  the  veil  of  poetical 
treatment.  A  case  in  point  is  Virgil's 
account  of  ^Eneas'  discovery  of  a  cornel  tree 
and  a  branching  myrtle  plant  upon  a  grave. 
^Eneas  goes  up  and  attempts  to  root  up 
the  plant,  purposing  to  adorn  the  altar 
with  the  green  shoots.  But  the  roots  drip 
black  blood,  and  when  J£neas  has  torn  up 
the  third  root,  he  hears  a  piteous  cry  from 
the  depths  of  the  mound :  the  soul  of  Poly- 
dor  us,  who  was  slain  by  Achilles,  cries  for 
mercy.  An  Annamite  story  tells  of  a  fisher- 
46 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

man  who  made  a  gash  in  a  tree  trunk  which 
had  drifted  ashore.  Blood  streams  forth, 
and  it  appears  that  an  empress  and  her 
three  daughters  who  had  been  thrown  into 
the  sea  had  been  reincarnated  in  the  tree. 
The  Abyssinians  assert  that  at  the  spot 
where  a  maiden  buried  her  seven  brothers 
seven  palm  trees  grew  from  their  bones. 
Here  we  observe  that  the  soul  creates  for 
itself  the  tree  which  is  to  be  its  future 
habitation  :  on  the  other  hand,  many  other 
races,  such  as  the  Slavs,  believe  that  the 
fruit  trees  in  the  garden  receive  the  soul 
of  a  member  of  the  family  upon  his  death. 
Fancy  carries  the  thread  of  the  story  yet 
further  ;  from  the  wood  of  one  of  these 
trees  the  cradle  is  made,  which  is  to  contain 
a  new  life  :  does  not  the  soul  of  the  ancestor 
thus  return  to  the  grandson  or  the  great- 
grandson  ? 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  belief 
that  the  soul  is  contained  in  the  blood.     In 
full  correspondence  with   this  idea  is   the 
47 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

fact  that  belief  in  the  migration  of  souls  to 
plants  occasionally  occurs  in  another  form, 
which  regards  plants  as  developed  from 
drops  of  blood.  Thus  the  Greeks  believed 
that  the  anemone  sprang  from  the  blood  of 
the  dying  Adonis.  A  legend  from  the 
Armenian  town  of  Erzeroum  states  that 
the  tulip  first  grew  from  the  blood  of  the 
dying  Ferdad  at  the  spot  where  he  threw 
himself  from  the  rocks  in  despair  for  his 
rejected  love.  Even  the  red  poppies  upon 

Ithe  battlefield  of  Waterloo  are  regarded  by 
popular  belief  as  springing  from  the  blood 

\of  the  brave  warriors  who  fell  in  the  battle. 

SOUL-TRANSMIGRATION   FROM  MAN   TO 
INANIMATE   OBJECTS 

Primitive  thought  regards  objects  which 
we  consider  inanimate  as  no  less  capable  of 
possessing  souls  after  the  nature  of  man 
than  animals  and  plants  :  hence  we  need 
feel  no  surprise  at  the  belief  that  mortal 
souls  can  pass  into  inanimate  objects.  The 
48 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

most  frequent  form  of  this  belief  regards 
the  soul  of  a  deceased  man  as  inhabiting  an 
image  erected  to  him,  or  as  present  especially 
in  his  picture  or  statue.  In  this  connection 
we  may  refer  to  the  common  fact,  that  the 
ordinary  believer  regards  the  image  before 
which  he  kneels  as  personifying  the  being 
which  he  there  adores.  An  infinite  number 
of  examples  might  be  quoted,  from  the 
ancient  Tyrians,  who  put  fetters  upon  the 
statue  of  their  sun  god  to  prevent  him  from 
leaving  their  town,  to  the  Russian  peasant 
of  the  present  day,  who  blindfolds  his  ikon 
that  it  may  not  see  him  commit  an  un- 
righteous act.  In  fact,  a  mere  stone  may 
serve  as  a  habitation  for  the  departing  soul. 
Primitive  simplicity  can  have  seen  no 
greater  difficulty  in  accepting  this  idea  than 
in  believing  its  contrary,  that  men  were 
originally  born  from  stones.  This  latter 
belief  is  to  be  found  among  the  Greeks,  as 
everyone  is  aware ;  strangely  enough,  it 
exists  in  remarkably  similar  form  among 
E  49 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  South  American  tribe  of  the  Tamanakes 
on  the  Orinoco.  More  familiar  to  us  are  the 
stories  to  be  found  in  every  country  of  men 
turned  into  stones :  these  are  popular 
explanations  of  the  existence  of  rocks 
showing  some  resemblance  to  the  human 
form.  A  more  striking  example  of  the 
belief  that  the  human  soul  can  pass  into  an 
inanimate  object  is  provided  by  China  with 
its  belief  that  the  soul  (or  more  correctly, 
one  of  the  three  souls)  of  an  ancestor  enters 
the  tablet  erected  to  his  memory  by  his 
family.  Here  the  departed  relative  receives 
the  veneration  of  his  descendants,  and  is 
informed  of  their  joys  and  sorrows  :  if,  for 
instance,  there  is  a  marriage  in  the  house- 
hold, the  head  of  the  family  burns  incense 
before  the  tablet,  pours  libations  of  wine  to 
it,  reads  the  announcement  of  the  betrothal 
before  it,  and  eventually  burns  it  in  that 
spot,  in  order  to  give  the  message  a  form 
in  greater  congruity,  so  to  say,  with  the 
position  of  the  deceased. 
50 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

A  large  number  of  the  examples  which  we 
have  hitherto  quoted  in  illustration  of  the 
belief  that  the  human  soul  can  be  rein- 
carnated in  another  human  body,  or  in 
some  non-human  organism,  might  well  be 
considered  as  examples  of  metempsychosis 
proper.  But  this  term  is  perhaps  more 
correctly  restricted  to  cases  where  we  find 
a  connected  series  of  transmigrations,  where, 
in  other  words,  the  life  of  an  individual 
forms  but  one  link  in  a  chain  of  reincar- 
nations ;  it  is  more  satisfactory  to  regard, 
as  we  have  done,  the  belief  in  isolated 
instances  of  metempsychosis  as  the  most 
important  of  the  antecedent  beliefs  pre- 
supposed by  the  idea  of  metempsychosis 
proper.  Thus,  in  the  preceding  pages,  our 
instances  have  been  purposely  chosen  from 
the  most  different  races  and  climates  :  for 
the  very  diversity  of  our  sources  of  informa- 
tion should  arouse  the  impression  that  the 
belief  in  metempsychosis  was  not  confined 
to  any  one  race  or  group  of  races,  but  was 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  common  property  of  mankind.  The 
study  of  comparative  religion  or  of  com- 
parative philosophy,  if  undertaken  from 
the  historical  point  of  view,  must  leave  us 
profoundly  impressed  with  the  fact,  that 
the  further  we  retrace  early  theories  of  life 
and  of  nature,  the  greater  is  the  similarity 
which  such  theories  display  :  whereas  if  we 
follow  the  development  of  these  ideas  from 
their  source  downwards,  an  increasing  ten- 
dency to  diverge  is  constantly  apparent. 
Hence  the  antecedent  ideas  necessary  to 
the  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls,  in 
the  restricted  sense  of  the  term,  are  to  be 
found  throughout  the  world.  Why,  then, 
did  not  the  belief  in  metempsychosis  become 
universal  ?  To  produce  this  result  a  further 
condition  was  required ;  the  belief  in 
metempsychosis  in  its  proper  sense  can  only 
begin  at  a  particular  stage  of  intellectual 
development,  and,  moreover,  can  only 
arise  among  peoples  possessing  that  special 
disposition  to  compare  facts  and  make 
52 


FROM   BEING  TO  BEING 

deductions  from  them,  which  is  necessary 
to  the  development  of  any  such  belief  as 
this.  The  Semitic  peoples,  for  instance, 
were  far  too  realistic  in  their  mode  of  thought 
for  the  belief  in  metempsychosis  to  take 
root  among  them.  Such  traces  of  the  theory 
as  may  be  found  among  them  are  due  to 
foreign  influence. 


53 


PART   II 
METEMPSYCHOSIS   PROPERLY  SO   CALLED 


CHAPTER    I 
PRELIMINARY  CONSIDERATIONS 

SO  far  as  we  know,  there  are  but  three 
peoples  who  may  be  considered  as 
typically  representative  of  the  belief  in 
metempsychosis  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
term ;  the  Indians,  the  Greeks,  and  the 
Celts.  We  have  disregarded  instances  based 
upon  inadequate  evidence  :  thus  the  Bishop 
of  Cracow,  Vincent  Kadlubek  (died  1223) 
states  in  his  Polish  chronicle  that  a  foolish 
belief  was  universally  entertained  by  the 
Getse  (by  whom  he  elsewhere  means  the 
Prussians)  to  the  effect  that  souls  which 
leave  men's  bodies  return  again  in  new- 
born bodies,  and  that  many  souls  become 
bestial  by  assuming  animal  forms ;  this 
evidence  seems  to  me  to  be  somewhat  un- 
reliable. Another  and  probably  more  notice- 
57 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

able  omission  will  be  that  of  the  Egyptians, 
who  would  perhaps  occur  to  the  casual 
reader  as  soon  as  he  heard  the  term  metem- 
psychosis mentioned.  |  We  may  be  referred 
to  a  famous  passage  in  the  Greek  historian 
Herodotus,  in  which  he  says  :  "  now  the 
Egyptians  are  the  first  who  have  affirmed 
the  opinion  that  the  human  soul  is  immortal, 
and  that  when  the  body  decays  the  soul 
invariably  enters  another  body  upon  the 
point  of  birth.  When  it  has  thus  succes- 
sively passed  through  the  bodies  of  all  the 
animals  on  earth,  in  the  water,  and  in  the 
air,  it  returns  once  more  into  a  human  body 
upon  the  point  of  birth,  and  this  circle  of 
migrations  it  completes  in  three  thousand 
years."  As  it  happens,  a  large  number  of 
inscriptions  have  provided  tolerably  com- 
plete information  concerning  the  true  nature 
of  Egyptian  ideas  upon  the  condition  of  the 
soul  after  death,  and  the  observations  of 
Herodotus,  as  above  quoted,  remain  un- 
confirmed. It  is  true  that  in  certain  chap- 
58 


PRELIMINARY  CONSIDERATIONS 

ters  of  the  so-called  Book  of  the  Dead,  the 
soul  is  credited  with  the  capacity  of  trans- 
forming itself  upon  occasion  into  other 
beings,  and  of  taking  the  form  of  a  golden 
sparrow-hawk,  of  a  lily,  of  a  sacred  ram,  of  a 
crocodile,  etc.  But  in  these  cases  it  must 
be  carefully  remembered  that  the  trans- 
formation is  not  due  to  any  natural  law  to 
which  the  soul  concerned  is  subjected,  but 
is  rather  represented  as  a  special  privilege 
which  may  be  conceded  at  times  to  the 
souls  of  skilful  magicians  ;  nor  does  the 
statement  imply  more  than  an  attempt  to 
secure  greater  sanctity  for  the  dwellers  in 
the  next  world  by  providing  them  with  un- 
usual powers  of  self-transformation.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  doctrine  of  metempsy- 
chosis in  its  strict  form  invariably  regards 
reincarnation  as  the  inevitable  destiny  of 
the  human  soul ;  liberation  from  this 
necessity  is  the  great  ideal  and  hope  of  the 
soul,  and  is  considered  to  be,  at  most,  the 
more  or  less  remote  goal  of  a  toilsome 
59 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

course  of  self-redemption.  The  succession 
of  these  reincarnations  is  determined  by 
existing  theories  upon  moral  retribution  or 
religious  and  ethical  purification  :  so  much 
will  be  apparent  when  we  consider  the 
beliefs  of  the  Indians  and  Greeks,  among 
whom  metempsychosis  assumed  its  classical 
form. 


60 


CHAPTER    II 
METEMPSYCHOSIS  AMONG  THE  CELTS 

OUR  knowledge  of  the  Celtic  religion 
in  general  is  extremely  vague,  and  of 
Celtic  ideas  upon  metempsychosis  we  know 
very  little.  Caesar,  however,  in  his  De 
Bello  Gallico  (VI,  xiv,  4)  tells  us  that  the 
Druids  —  the  Celtic  priests  —  believed  that 
the  soul  did  not  die,  but  passed  from  one 
individual  to  another  :  they  regarded  this 
belief  as  a  great  stimulus  to  morality  of 
life  and  felt  no  fear  of  death.  A  somewhat 
later  writer,  Diodorus  Siculus,  says,  when 
describing  the  Gauls,  that  at  meals  they 
would  often  dispute  about  trifles  and  chal- 
lenge one  another  to  duels,  "  for  of  the  end 
of  life  they  make  no  account.  In  fact,  the 
opinion  of  Pythagoras  (see  below)  prevails 
among  them,  that  the  souls  of  men  are 
61 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

immortal,  and  come  to  life  again  after  a 
certain  term  of  years,  entering  other  bodies  " 
(V,  xxviii).  However,  the  value  of  this 
statement  is  considerably  modified  by  the 
author's  following  words  :  "  upon  the  occa- 
sion of  a  burial,  many  cast  letters  upon  the 
funeral  pile,  which  they  have  written  to 
their  dead  friends,  in  the  hope  that  the  dead 
will  read  them/1  A  somewhat  later  state- 
ment by  the  historian  Valerius  Maximus 
(II,  vi,  10)  says  that  the  Gauls  lend  one 
another  inconceivably  large  sums  of  money 
on  the  mere  promise  of  repayment  in  the 
next  world.  These  customs  would  rather 
incline  us  to  believe  that  the  dead  had  to 
expect  a  common  life  beyond  the  grave, 
and  not  reincarnation  for  another  life  upon 
earth.  Accordingly,  the  observations  of 
the  ancient  historians  upon  Celtic  belief  in 
metempsychosis  are  to  be  accepted  with 
caution,  nor  should  I  venture  to  give  a 
definite  list  of  the  successive  reincarnations 
in  which  the  Celts  believed,  as  other  writers 
62 


AMONG  THE  CELTS 


have  attempted  to  do  upon  the  evidence  of 
other  and  even  more  doubtful  statements. 
At  any  rate,  the  words  of  a  famous  sixth 
century  bard  upon  his  own  reincarnations 
are  sufficiently  definite.  He  asserts  that  he 
became  a  lynx,  a  dog,  and  a  stag,  then  a 
spade,  an  axe,  a  cock,  a  stallion,  and  a  goat, 
and  finally  a  grain  of  corn,  which  was 
swallowed  by  a  hen.  The  question  has 
also  been  raised  whether  these  beliefs 
were  indigenous  and  common  to  all  Celtic 
tribes  :  it  has  been  conjectured  that  indi- 
vidual Druids  borrowed  them  from  Greek 
colonists.  To  these  questions  no  final 
answer  can  as  yet  be  given. 


CHAPTER   III 
METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN  INDIA 

VEDIC-BRAHMAN   BELIEFS 

INDIA  is  the  country  in  which  the  belief 
in  the  transmigration  of  souls  has 
chiefly  flourished.  Opinions  concerning  the 
date  of  its  first  appearance  are  divergent. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  date  can  well 
be  placed  at  a  very  early  period,  although 
the  oldest  monuments  of  the  so-called 
Vedic  literature  show  very  scanty  traces  of 
the  belief.  However,  an  early  Indian  code 
requires  that  upon  the  occasion  of  a  sacrifice 
a  fragment  of  the  offering  to  the  departed 
spirits  should  also  be  thrown  to  the  birds, 
"  because  we  are  taught  that  our  fathers 
glide  along,  taking  the  form  of  birds/'  For 
our  purpose,  an  acquaintance  with  the 
classical  form  of  Indian  metempsychosis 
64 


METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN   INDIA 

will  suffice.  The  conception  is  obviously 
dominated  by  the  idea  of  moral  retribution. 
In  the  Indian  collection  of  fairy  tales,  the 
Pancatantra,  to  which  we  have  already 
referred,  the  difference  between  a  king  and 
a  god  is  marked  :  the  king  can  reward  good 
or  bad  actions  at  the  time  of  their  commis- 
sion, while  the  god  can  only  give  rewards 
or  punishments  upon  the  occasion  of  a  re- 
incarnation. As  regards  the  nature  of  these 
rewards,  it  may  be  said,  in  brief,  that  a 
man  becomes  the  mirror  of  his  deeds.  This 
fact  is  vividly  stated  by  the  famous  legal 
code  of  Manu,  the  essential  parts  of  which 
are  pre-Buddhist  and  represent  Brahman 
ideals.  Thus  a  Brahman  or  priest  who  asks 
for  gifts  for  an  offering  and  does  not  use 
them  all  for  the  purpose  stated  becomes  a 
vulture  or  crow  (XI,  25)  :  for  vultures  and 
crows  may  be  said  to  live  by  abstracting 
food.  The  reasons  for  special  forms  of  re- 
birth are  not  always  so  obvious  as  in  this 
case  :  nor  do  we  always  know  what  moral 
F  65 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

conceptions  the  Indians  applied  to  par- 
ticular animals.  If,  for  instance,  we  examine 
the  list  of  punishments  for  theft,  we  find 
(XII,  61-69)  '•  "  he  who  from  greed  steals 
precious  stones,  pearls,  corals,  or  other 
valuables,  will  be  born  a  goldsmith  (the 
name  of  a  bird)  :  he  who  steals  gold  will 
become  a  rat  ...  he  who  steals  honey,  a 
stinging  insect,  he  who  steals  milk,  a  crow, 
he  who  steals  sugar-cane  juice,  a  dog ;  the 
thief  of  butter  becomes  an  ichneumon,  of 
meat,  a  vulture,  of  lard,  a  heron,  of  oil,  a 
winged  stag-beetle,  of  salt,  a  cricket,  of 
sour  milk,  a  Balaka  bird,  of  silk,  a  par- 
tridge, of  flax,  a  frog,  of  cotton,  a  crane, 
of  a  cow,  an  iguana  (a  species  of  lizard),  of 
syrup,  a  flying  fox,  of  scent,  a  musk  rat, 
of  green  vegetables,  a  peacock,  of  any 
cooked  food,  a  porcupine,  of  uncooked  food, 
a  hedgehog,  of  fire,  a  heron,  of  household 
utensils,  a  wasp,  of  bright  coloured  clothes, 
a  guinea  fowl,  of  a  stag  or  elephant,  a  wolf, 
of  a  horse,  a  tiger,  of  roots  and  fruit,  an  ape, 
66 


METEMPSYCHOSIS   IN   INDIA 

of  a  woman,  a  bear,  of  water,  a  black  and 
white  cuckoo,  of  a  cart,  a  camel,  of  cattle,  a 
he-goat.  He  who  deprives  another  of  his 
property  by  force  or  eats  sacrificial  offerings 
of  which  no  sacrifice  has  been  made,  un- 
doubtedly becomes  an  animal.  Women 
who  commit  theft  bear  corresponding  guilt 
and  become  the  females  of  the  animals 
above  enumerated/1 

Elsewhere  in  the  same  code  the  punish- 
ment appointed  for  a  faithless  wife  is  to 
become  a  jackal  after  death  (V,  164,  IX,  30), 
while  if  she  is  faithful  to  her  husband  during 
his  life  or  after  his  death  she  will  have  the 
privilege  of  union  with  him  after  death. 
Further  (XII,  55  ff.),  he  who  kills  a  Bral> 
man,  after  a  long  progress  through  dreadful 
hells,  is  to  be  reborn  as  a  dog,  pig,  ass,  camel, 
cow,  goat,  sheep,  stag,  bird,  etc.  The  soul 
of  the  Brahman  who  is  addicted  to  for- 
bidden drink  enters  the  bodies  of  great  and 
small  insects,  moths,  carrion-eating  birds, 
and  destructive  animals.  Men  who  take 
67 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

pleasure  in  inflicting  pain  become  carnivor- 
ous animals  ;  those  who  eat  forbidden  food 
become  worms  ;  thieves  become  creatures 
which  devour  their  own  kind  (such  as  fish, 
etc.).  The  worst  fate  is  reserved  for  those 
who  commit  adultery  with  the  wife  of  a 
priest  or  teacher  (the  so-called  deadly  sin 
in  the  legal  code)  ;  their  souls  are  to  return 
hundreds  of  times  into  grass,  shrubs,  creep- 
ing animals,  carnivorous  animals  with  claws 
and  cruel  dispositions.  Generally  speaking, 
the  opinion  naturally  prevails  that  the 
threatened  reincarnation  is  not  a  final 
punishment,  but  is  merely  the  prelude  to 
another  birth,  so  that  the  series  extends 
through  an  infinity  of  time ;  the  code 
speaks  of  successive  migrations  through  ten 
thousand  millions  of  lives!  (VI,  63). 
^It  is  immediately  obvious  that  dogmas  of 
this  kind  are  not  the  pure  result  of  simple 
popular  belief  :  we  see  the  handiwork  of  an 
educated  priesthood,  for  so  complex  a 
system  could  only  have  been  the  result  of 
68 


METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN   INDIA 

comparison  and  inference.  The  code  of 
Manu  is  the  first  attempt  to  systematise  the 
world  of  living  things  and  to  subordinate 
the  several  classes  of  life.  The  direction 
to  be  followed  by  the  soul  on  its  migrations 
is  then  determined  as  threefold,  according 
as  the  man  by  his  deeds  has  fitted  himself 
for  the  world  of  gods,  of  men,  or  of  animals. 
Within  these  three  worlds  different  grades 
are  distinguished.  In  the  animal  world, 
for  instance,  the  lowest  species  are  those 
without  powers  of  locomotion  :  then  come 
the  small  and  great  insects,  the  snakes,  and 
tortoises  ;  on  a  higher  plane  are  elephants, 
horses,  lions,  tigers,  and  boars  ;  highest  of 
all  are  certain  mythological  animals.  It 
must  also  be  noticed  that  among  these 
animals,  as  if  they  were  upon  the  same 
level,  are  placed  men  of  despised  castes 
and  savages  :  so  relative  is  the  value 
placed  on  human  life  as  such.  The  theo- 
logians, the  penitents,  the  sacrificers,  and 
the  learned  are  placed  highest  in  the  human 
69 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

scale  by  this  religion,  which  fact  suffices  to 
betray  its  priestly  origin. 

This  doctrine  as  set  forth  in  Manu's  code, 
which  teaches  that  man  receives  retribution 
for  his  misdeeds  by  becoming  what  they 
are,  has  been  well  criticised  by  Herder  as 
follows  :  "  how  lightly  does  the  cruel  man 
suffer  for  his  cruelty,  if  his  soul  enters  the 
body  of  a  tiger.  The  former  tiger  in  human 
shape  now  becomes  the  reality  untroubled 
by  conscience  or  the  sense  of  duty,  which 
pricked  him  at  times  in  his  former  state. 
Now  he  may  rage  and  mangle  as  hunger, 
thirst,  and  appetite  bid  him,  at  the  prompt- 
ings of  an  instinct  which  only  now  can  be 
satiated.  Such  was  the  desire  of  the  human 
tiger.  Instead  of  punishment,  he  receives 
reward.  He  is  what  he  wished  to  be  and 
what  he  was  but  very  imperfectly  while  in 
human  shape/' 

Later  Brahman  theology  apparently  dis- 
played a  tendency  to  connect  the  souls  of 
the  departed  with  the  waning  and  waxing 
70 


METEMPSYCHOSIS   IN   INDIA 

moon.  The  so-called  Upanishads,  the  philo- 
sophical scriptures,  which  Paul  Deussen, 
their  translator,  declared  to  be  to  the 
Vedas  what  the  New  Testament  is  to  the 
Bible,  state,  "  all  who  leave  this  world  go 
directly  to  the  moon.  By  their  lives  its 
waxing  crescent  is  increased,  and  by  means 
of  its  waning  it  brings  them  to  second 
birth.  But  the  moon  is  also  the  gate  of  the 
heavenly  world,  and  he  who  can  answer 
the  questions  of  the  moon  is  allowed  to 
pass  beyond  it.  He  who  can  give  no  answer 
is  turned  to  rain  by  the  moon  and  rained 
down  upon  the  earth.  He  is  born  again 
here  below,  as  worm  or  fly,  or  fish  or  bird, 
or  lion,  or  boar  or  animal  with  teeth,  or 
tiger,  or  man,  or  anything  else  in  one  or 
another  place,  according  to  his  works  and 
to  his  knowledge.  So  when  a  man  comes  to 
the  moon,  the  moon  asks  him,  who  art 
thou  ?  If  he  answers  rightly,  the  moon 
allows  him  to  pass  onward,  and  he  comes 
to  the  world  of  fire,  then  to  the  world  of 
wind,  then,  to  the  world  of  gods,"  etc. 
71 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

While  these  words  give  us  the  impression 
of  a  course  of  development  gradually  rising 
to  higher  planes,  within  the  same  literature 
the  round  of  transmigrations  is  sometimes 
represented  as  a  circle,  as  in  the  lines  : 

"  His  mother  that  was  becomes  his  wife  : 
His  wife  that  was  becomes  his  mother : 
His  father  becomes  his  son, 
And  his  son,  again,  becomes  his  father. 
Thus  in  the  circle  of  the  Samsara,* 
Like  as  the  buckets  upon  the  wheel 
Revolve,  so  turns  he  ever  backwards 
To  his  mother's  breast  and  to  his  birth." 

BUDDHIST  BELIEFS 

Buddhism  inherited  the  Brahman  belief 
in  metempsychosis.  The  use  of  the  term, 
however,  in  speaking  of  Buddhism  is  of 
questionable  legitimacy,  for  Buddhism  does 
not  accept  that  which  we  have  termed  the 
first  necessary  condition  antecedent  to  a 
belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls,  the 
existence  of  a  personal  soul.  Buddhism 
directly  rejects  this  conception,  and  for  it 

*  i.e.  course  of  migration. 
72 


METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN   INDIA 

there  is  no  real  ego  :  it  admits  only  the 
existence  of  independent  spiritual  phe- 
nomena in  constant  succession.  Thus  it 
compares  what  we  call  the  soul  with  a  flame 
which  reproduces  itself  every  moment  and 
feeds  upon  itself  meanwhile,  and  the  indi- 
vidual life  is  but  a  light  which  has  been 
kindled  at  another  light.  The  combustible 
matter  is  provided  by  human  action  ;  by 
action  man  creates  matter  for  further 
existence  and  advances  towards  reincar- 
nation, and  this,  in  Buddhist  theory,  is  so 
miserable  a  destiny  that  man's  redemption 
culminates  in  the  removal  of  any  possibility 
of  reincarnation,  that  is,  in  the  negation  of 
the  human  will  to  act. 

A  belief  in  metempsychosis,  when  there 
is  no  belief  in  the  existence  of  the  soul, 
seems  to  us  an  impossible  contradiction. 
Popular  Indian  theory,  however,  was  not  so 
deeply  impressed  with  the  inconsistency. 
In  general,  the  doubts  of  the  learned  con- 
cerning the  existence  of  a  personal  soul  have, 
73 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

perhaps,  never  been  seriously  accepted  by 
many  people  anywhere  in  the  world.  Thus 
the  belief  in  soul-transmigration  remained 
unshaken,  and  in  popular  theory  even  the 
Buddhists  considered  that  one  and  the 
same  soul  went  through  the  whole  round  of 
reincarnations.  Buddhist  doctrine  even 
taught  that  he  who  would  attain  complete 
enlightenment  must  reach  the  moment  when 
he  succeeds  in  arousing  recollection  of  his 
former  states  of  existence  by  means  of  con- 
tinued spiritual  introspection.  That  recol- 
lection arose  in  Buddha,  and  in  this  respect 
he  became  a  pattern  and  example  to  his 
followers :  "In  such  a  frame  of  mind, 
earnest,  purified,  cleansed,  steady,  freed 
from  dross,  docile,  pliable,  firm,  impregnable, 
I  directed  my  mind  to  gain  knowledge  by 
recollection  of  earlier  states  of  existence. 
I  remembered  many  former  states  as  one 
life,  then  as  two  lives  .  .  .  then  as  a  hun- 
dred thousand  lives  :  I  remembered  the 
times  of  many  creations  and  many  times  of 
74 


METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN   INDIA 

decay,  of  the  world  and  death  .  .  .  there 
was  I,  such  was  my  name,  such  my  family, 
such  and  such  my  profession  and  my  rank, 
such  weal  and  woe  did  I  experience,  and 
such  was  the  end  of  my  life  :  there  after 
death  I  re-entered  life  elsewhere  :  .  .  .  dead, 
I  re-entered  life  here.  Thus  I  recalled  many 
different  forms  of  previous  existence/' 

These  previous  existences  of  the  master 
became  the  subject  matter  of  pious  legends, 
which  were  elaborated  to  serve  the  cause  of 
Buddhist  ethical  theory  with  all  the  extra- 
vagance native  to  Indian  imaginations. 
Buddha's  special  mode  of  behaviour  in  all 
his  previous  lives  was  made  the  pattern  to 
be  followed  by  his  devotees  in  every  con- 
ceivable situation.  Thus  the  numerous 
edifying  narratives  of  his  reincarnations 
provide  a  complete  code  of  moral  precepts. 
As  is  well  known,  sympathy  is  the  chief 
Buddhist  virtue.  An  inspiring  example  of 
the  practice  of  sympathy  is  given,  for 
instance,  in  the  following  anecdote.  In  one 
75 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 


his  previous  lives  Buddha  was  incarnate 
as  a  hare.  It  happened  one  day  that  a 
hungry  Brahman  came  and  asked  him  for 
food.  Buddha  had  nothing  to  give,  but 
would  not  send  him  away  empty.  What 
was  to  be  done  ?  "  Go/'  he  said,  at  length, 
"  collect  wood  and  light  a  fire.  I  will  roast 
myself  and  you  shall  then  eat  me."  His 
suggestion  was  carried  out.  Naturally  the 
poor  hare  had  nothing  to  lose  ;  he  was 
rewarded  for  his  sympathy  by  a  reincar- 
nation upon  a  correspondingly  higher  plane. 
Opportunity  for  virtuous  action  of  this 
kind  will  eventually  come  to  everyone  : 
for  Buddhist  imagination  did  not  readily 
conceive  a  conclusion  to  the  succession  of 
reincarnations.  The  number  of  them  seems 
to  be  infinite,  as  may  be  inferred  from  the 
following  conversation  of  Buddha  with  his 
disciples.  "  What  think  ye,  children,  whether 
is  greater,  the  blood  that  was  shed  at  your 
beheading  upon  the  long  journey  from  birth 
to  death  and  from  birth  to  death,  or  the 
76 


METEMPSYCHOSIS  IN   INDIA 

water  of  the  four  great  seas  ?  "  "  As  we 
understand,  oh  master,  the  teaching  deliv- 
ered by  the  enlightened  one,  we  have  shed 
upon  the  long  journey  from  birth  to  death 
and  from  birth  to  death  more  blood  at  our 
beheading  than  there  is  water  in  the  four 
seas."  "  Good,  my  children,  good  is  it  that 
ye  thus  understand  the  teaching  I  have 
delivered  to  you :  more  blood,  indeed, 
children,  on  this  long  journey,  hastening 
ever  from  birth  to  death  and  from  birth 
again  to  death,  have  ye  shed  at  your  be- 
heading than  there  is  water  in  the  four  seas. 
For  long,  ye  children,  as  cattle  and  calves 
have  ye  shed  more  blood  at  your  beheading 
than  there  is  water  in  the  four  seas  ;  for 
long,  ye  children,  as  buffaloes  and  buffalo- 
calves  have  ye  shed  more  blood  at  your 
beheading  than  there  is  water  in  the  four 
seas/'  Thus  the  speech  continues  :  it  is  an 
excellent  example  of  the  general  style  of 
Buddhist  exhortation,  with  its  circum- 
stantial repetition  of  each  several  clause  in 
77 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

a  sentence  ;  it  proceeds  to  treat  successively 
of  the  reincarnation  of  men  as  sheep  and 
lambs,  goats  and  kids,  deer  and  stags,  sv/ine 
and  sucking-pigs,  fowls,  pigeons,  geese,  etc. 
This  may  suffice  as  a  description  of  the 
Indian  doctrine  of  metempsychosis  in  its 
classical  form :  to  pursue  its  progress 
among  the  many  later  sects  (such  as  the 
famous  Sikhs)  would  lead  us  beyond  the 
limit  of  our  space. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE  GREEK   DOCTRINE  OF 
METEMPSYCHOSIS 

WHETHER  there  was  any  direct  con- 
nection between  the  Indian  belief 
in  metempsychosis  which  we  have  just  de- 
scribed and  the  Greek  doctrine  remains  an 
open  question.  The  Greek  historian  Hero- 
dotus thought  that  his  countrymen  had 
borrowed  the  theory  from  the  Egyptians. 
This  supposition  is  excluded  by  the  facts 
we  have  already  stated  concerning  the 
Egyptian  form  of  the  belief.  Historically, 
it  can  apparently  be  demonstrated  to  have 
first  appeared  in  Thrace,  upon  the  northern 
frontier  of  Greece.  To  Thrace  belongs  the 
legendary  figure  of  the  famous  singer 
Orpheus,  from  whom  the  mysterious  sect 
of  the  "  Orphici  "  took  their  name.  Their 
doctrines  are  highly  coloured  by  poetical 
79 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

imagery,  but  the  following  are  the  main 
points  which  concern  our  present  investiga- 
tion :  soul  and  body  are  united  by  a  com- 
pact unequally  binding  upon  either ;  the 
soul  is  divine,  immortal,  and  aspires  to 
freedom,  while  the  body  holds  it  in  fetters 
as  a  prisoner/*'  Death  dissolves  this  com- 
pact, but  only  to  re-imprison  the  liberated 
soul  after  a  short  time  :  for  the  wheel  of 
birth  revolves  inexorably.  "  Thus  the 
soul  continues  its  journey,  alternating  be- 
tween a  separate,  unrestrained  existence 
and  fresh  reincarnation,  round  the  wide 
circle  of  necessity,  as  the  companion  of 
many  bodies  of  men  and  animals  "  (Erwin 
Rhode :  Psyche).  To  these  unfortunate 
prisoners  Orpheus  proclaims  the  message 
of  liberation,  that  they  stand  in  need  of  the 
grace  of  redeeming  gods  and  of  Dionysu^ 
in  particular,  and  calls  them  to  turn  to  God 
by  ascetic  piety  of  life  and  self-purification  : 
the  purer  their  lives,  the  higher  will  be  their 
next  reincarnation,  until  the  soul  has 
80 


THE  GREEK   DOCTRINE 

completed  the  spiral  ascent  of  destiny,  to 
live  for  ever  as  God,  from  whom  it  comes. 
The  Orphic  belief  seems  to  have  been 
widely  current  in  the  Greek  colonies  in 
southern  Italy  and  Sicily. 

We  know  that  southern  Italy  was  also 
the  centre  of  Pythagoras'  influence,  the  most 
famous  exponent  of  metempsychosis  among 
the  Greeks.  Here,  again,  the  probably  in- 
soluble question  arises,  whether  or  to  what 
extent  a  connection  between  the  Pytha- 
gorean and  Orphic  teaching  may  be  assumed. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  theory  of  the  soul 
adopted  by  either  school  of  thought  shows 
close  affinity.  The  Pythagoreans  also  re- 
garded the  soul  as  temporarily  imprisoned  in 
the  body,  which  it  leaves  at  death  ;  after  a 
period  of  purification  in  the  lower  world  it 
returns  to  earth  (the  Pythagoreans  con- 
sidered the  air  to  be  full  of  souls)  and  begins 
a  new  career  in  a  new  body  corresponding 
to  its  deeds  in  the  former  life.  Pythagora^ 
himself  asserted  that  he  had  passed  through  , 
G  81 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

four  previous  earthly  lives  in  human  form. 
He  was  able  even  to  point  out  the  place  in 
the  temple  of  the  goddess  Hera,  where  the 
shield  hung,  which  he  had  used  during  his 
former  life  as  Euphorbus  at  the  siege  of 
vTroy,  where  he  was  killed  by  Menelaus. 
At  a  later  date  his  soul  entered  the  body  of 
a  cock  upon  one  occasion.  These  state- 
ments exposed  him  to  a  considerable  amount 
of  ridicule.  One  of  his  bitterest  mockers, 
Lucian,  represents  a  certain  Mikyllus  as 
asking  this  cock  whether  the  events  of  the 
Trojan  war,  which  the  cock  must  have 
witnessed  as  Euphorbus,  had  actually  hap- 
pened as  Homer  related  them.  "  What 
could  Homer  know  of  them  ?  "  replies  the 
cock  :  "at  that  time  he  was  himself  a  camel 
in  Bactria  !  " 

Many,  however,  regarded  these  theories 
more  seriously.  It  is  difficult  to  say  how 
far  the  people  as  a  whole  were  influenced  by 
them,  but  their  effect  upon  poetry  and 
philosophy  was  unmistakable :  at  least 
82 


THE  GREEK   DOCTRINE 

three  names  in  this  connection  must  be 
mentioned,  the  poet  Pindar,  the  philosopher 
Empedocles,  and  Plato**- Pindar  considered 
that  the  soul  must  pass  through  at  least 
three  earthly  lives  before  it  could  escape 
the  compulsion  to  reincarnation.  Upon 
the  last  occasion  when  it  was  sent  to  the 
upper  world  by  the  queen  of  the  lower 
world,  it  received  the  privilege  of  entering 
the  body  of  a  king,  hero,  or  sage.  After 
death  the  soul  went  to  the  Islands  of 
the  Blessed,  where  undisturbed  enjoyment 
awaited  it,  and  was  honoured  as  a  hero 
by  men;  To  the  philosopher  Empedocles 
belong  the  lines  which  he  spoke  in  reference 
to  himself : 

"  Thus  in  former  lives  have  I  been  a  boy  and  a  girl, 
A  bush  and  a  bird  and  a  fish  without  speech  in 
the  depths  of  the  sea." 

As  this  strange  fragment  of  autobiography 
states,  Empedocles  extended  metempsy- 
chosis to  the  world  of  plants.  Few  adherents 
of  the  belief  have  gone  to  this  extreme,  even 
83 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

in  India.  In  Buddhism,  for  instance,  the 
limitation  of  metempsychosis  to  the  animal 
world  became  a  dogma,  though  only  after 
long  discussions  of  the  question."  'Plato  also 
diverged  from  the  earlier  philosopher  upon 
this  point :  in  general,  Plato  also  regarded 
the  soul  as  passing  through  several  bodies, 
at  least  three  (as  did  Pindar),  an  interval  of 
*  a  thousand  years  elapsing  between  each 
reincarnation.  The  soul  chose  its  new 
position  in  life  for  itself  (this  is  a  point 
peculiar  to  Plato),  always  in  accordance  with 
the  character  which  it  had  acquired  during 
its  former  existence,  so  that  the  soul  was 
"  symmetrical  "  with  the  body  which  clothed 
it.  Thus  man's  moral  action  ultimately 
determines  whether  he  rises  upwards  or 
sinks  to  the  level  of  the  animal  world.  The 
upward  path  eventually  enables  him  to 
avoid  the  necessity  of  reincarnation  and 
leads  him  home  to  the  "  realm  of  eternal 
and  untroubled  being/' 

Neo-platonism,  so  far  as  metempsychosis 
84 


THE  GREEK   DOCTRINE 

was  concerned,  followed  its  master's  teach- 
ing. Eventually  Greek  beliefs  coloured  the 
less  independent  philosophical  thought  of 
the  Romans  :  especially  prominent  at  Rome 
was  the  school  of  the  Sextii,  whose  doctrines 
were  borrowed  from  Pythagoreanism ;  traces 
of  this  school  are  apparent  in  the  writings  of 
Virgil,  who  lived  about  the  same  time  :  after 
a  thousand  years  have  completed  a  cycle  of 
existence  for  the  blessed  in  Elysium,  God 
summons  them  in  a  body  to  the  stream 
of  Lethe,  where  they  drink  the  waters  of 
oblivion  and  return  to  the  upper  world 
desiring  new  births. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  BELIEF  IN   METEMPSYCHOSIS 
IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

IN   THE   BIBLE   AND   IN  JUDAISM 

THE  belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls 
continually  recurs  sporadically  even 
within  religions  in  which  such  a  belief 
should  find  no  place.  Upon  the  occasion  of 
a  public  debate  I  have  heard  laymen  main- 
tain the  opinion  and  support  it  with  numer- 
ous Biblical  quotations,  that  both  Old  and 
New  Testament  taught  this  belief.  A 
quotation  regarded  as  of  primary  import- 
ance is  the  verse  of  Psalm  xc :  "  Thou 
turnest  man  to  destruction,  and  again  Thou 
sayest,  Come  again,  ye  children  of  men  "  ; 
St.  John  ix,  2,  the  question  of  the  young 
men,  is  also  quoted  :  "  Master,  who  sinned, 
this  man  or  his  parents  that  he  was  born 
86 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

blind  ?  "  What  view  are  we  to  take  of 
these  passages  ?  In  Psalm  xc,  3,  Luther's 
translation  is  the  obvious  cause  of  mis- 
conception. Luther  uses  two  different 
expressions,  while  in  the  original  text  the 
same  word  occurs  twice  :  "  Thou  allowest 
mankind  to  return  to  dust,  and  sayest, 
'  Return,  ye  children  of  the  earth '  "  (that  is 
to  say,  to  dust).  In  other  words,  both 
halves  of  the  verse,  according  to  the  rule  of 
the  so-called  "  synonymous  parallelism/' 
make  precisely  the  same  statement,  and 
both  refer  to  Genesis  iii,  19,  which  says  that 
the  fate  of  man  is  to  return  to  the  dust 
from  which  he  is  taken.  This  is  the  only 
interpretation  consistent  with  the  general 
sense  of  the  passage,  which  is,  after  all,  the 
important  point ;  for  the  poet  is  only  con- 
cerned with  the  contrast  between  the 
Everlasting  God  and  the  transitory  life  of 
man — the  creature  of  a  day,  who  dies  by  an 
early  death  owing  to  God's  anger  on  account 
of  his  sinfulness  (V.  7  f.). 
87 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

As  concerns  the  passage  in  St.  John  ix,  2, 
it  has  been  urged  that  the  supposition  of 
the  disciples,  who  considered  that  a  man 
might  be  born  blind  on  account  of  his  own 
sins,  is  only  intelligible  upon  the  assump- 
tion that  the  person  concerned  had  passed 
through  a  previous  state  of  existence  in 
which  he  had  committed  the  sins  in  question. 
This  conclusion  can  hardly  be  avoided,  and 
we  must  therefore  assume  that  the  full  force 
of  these  words  and  their  general  implica- 
tion were  not  realised  by  the  disciples  at  the 
moment  when  they  put  their  question  to 
Jesus,  or  by  the  writer  who  puts  it  in  their 
mouths.  In  any  case,  it  may  readily  be 
conceded  that  the  Judaism  of  that  age, 
notwithstanding  its  exclusiveness,  had  not 
entirely  escaped  the  overwhelming  influence 
of  Greek  intellectualism,  and  was  therefore 
by  no  means  entirely  ignorant  of  the  theory 
that  souls  existed  before  their  incarnation 
in  bodies,  though  this  would  not  of  itself 
justify  the  supposition  that  any  universal 
88 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

belief  in  metempsychosis  existed.  For 
instance,  the  so-called  "  wisdom  of  Solomon  " 
represents  King  Solomon  as  saying  :  "  For 
I  was  a  witty  child  and  had  a  good  spirit ; 
yea,  rather,  being  good,  I  came  into  a  body 
undefiled "  (Ch.  viii,  19 1).  During  the 
early  days  of  Christianity  similar  ideas  may 
be  found  in  Rabbinical  literature.  The 
Rabbis,  for  instance,  occasionally  state  that 
all  human  souls  which  were  to  enter  human 
bodies  up  to  the  time  of  the  Messiah  had 
existed  even  before  the  Creation.  In  the 
infinite  past  they  had  remained  in  a  kind 
of  store-house,  in  the  seventh  heaven,  or  in 
the  garden  of  Eden,  from  which  they  were 
brought  forth  to  become  incarnate  in  the 
human  bodies  which  they  were  to  inhabit. 
When  God  requires  a  soul  he  gives  an 
order  to  the  angel  in  charge  of  this  locality, 
and  says  to  him  :  "  Bring  me  such  and  such 
a  soul,  called  So-and-So,  and  of  such  and 
such  an  appearance/'  The  angel  immedi- 
ately goes  forth  and  brings  the  soul  before 
v  89 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

God.  The  soul  then  bows  and  prostrates 
itself  before  the  King  of  kings,  but  is  un- 
willing to  leave  the  world  in  which  it  has 
hitherto  lived  for  another.  Then  God  says 
to  it :  '"  The  world  into  which  I  send  thee 
shall  be  fairer  for  thee  than  that  in  which 
thou  hast  lived  hitherto."  Then  the  soul 
enters  the  body  of  a  mother  and  receives  a 
promise  from  the  angel  that  conducts  it, 
that  it  shall  enter  Paradise  if  it  keeps  God's 
commandments.  The  Rabbis  certainly  and 
constantly  insisted  upon  the  fact  that  the 
soul  enters  the  body  in  a  state  of  purity, 
but  this  assertion  is  in  fundamental  con- 
tradiction to  the  continual  reluctance  of 
the  soul  before  God  to  exchange  the  world 
in  which  it  has  lived  for  another.  If  this 
theory  concerning  the  objection  of  the  soul 
in  an  earlier  state  of  existence  to  undergo  a 
change  be  carried  a  little  further,  we  shall 
reach  the  idea  expressed  in  St.  John  ix,  2, 
that  actual  sin  can  be  committed  in  a  pre- 
vious state  of  existence.  Nor  is  it,  perhaps, 
90 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

surprising  that  no  further  instances  can  be 
adduced  from  contemporary  Jewish  litera- 
ture. The  fact,  however,  remains,  as  may 
be  seen  at  the  first  glance,  that  the  theory 
of  a  soul  in  an  earlier  state  of  existence  is 
very  far  removed  from  the  theory  of  metem- 
psychosis proper. 

Equally  impossible  is  it  to  regard  as 
inspired  by  this  belief  the  familiar  state- 
ments that  John  the  Baptist  or  Elias  or 
Jeremiah  had  returned  to  earth  in  the 
person  of  Jesus  (Matt,  xvi,  14).  Such  passages 
as  Matthew  xiv,  2,  Luke  ix,  7 1,  demonstrate 
beyond  cavil  the  fact  that  this  opinion  was 
merely  the  outcome  of  that  belief  in  a 
resurrection  which  all  pious  Jews  held  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  This 
belief  has  been  placed  in  a  false  perspective 
by  the  Jewish  historian  Josephus,  who 
represented  it  as  peculiar  to  the  Pharisees,  in 
a  manner  that  might  seem  to  show  them  as 
accepting  a  migration  of  the  soul :  this, 
however,  is  due  to  his  habit,  which  almost 
91 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

amounts  to  mania,  of  representing  the 
Jewish  parties  as  schools  of  philosophic 
thought.  He  personally,  at  least,  declares 
his  belief  that  the  souls  of  the  righteous, 
after  a  sojourn  in  the  holiest  part  of  heaven, 
may  return  in  undefiled  bodies  after  a 
certain  lapse  of  time  (Jewish  War  III, 
viii,  5). 

Traces  of  the  Greek  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis are  also  apparent  in  the  works 
of  Philo,  a  writer  representative  of  Greek 
Judaism,  and  an  early  contemporary  of 
Jesus.  He  considers  that  a  fall  from  God 
is  the  only  reason  why  the  soul  is  bound  to 
this  earthly  life,  i.e.  to  the  body.  The  ideal 
of  the  soul  is  to  aspire  to  direct  contempla- 
tion of  the  Deity  :  only  the  wise  and  virtu- 
ous can  attain  this  object  during  the  earthly 
life,  and  success  is  not  complete  until  after 
death,  when  the  soul  returns  to  its  original 
incorporeal  state.  He  who  cannot  avoid 
the  sins  of  sense  is  compelled  to  enter 
another  body  after  death. 
92 


IN   OTHER  QUARTERS 

In  its  entirety,  the  belief  in  metem- 
psychosis proper  Mias  not  adopted  before 
the  rise  of  the  Jewish  philosophy  of  the 
so-called  Cabbalists,  a  much  later  growth  : 
its  doctrine  of  the  "  rolling  onward  of  the 
soul  "  expresses  this  belief.  "  Souls  enter 
the  bodies  of  wild  animals,  birds,  and 
worms,  for  " — such  is  the  text  quoted  to 
support  the  assertion—*'  Jahwe  (Jehovah) 
is  the  God  of  the  spirits  of  all  flesh  "  (Num. 
xxvii,  16),  and  the  man  who  has  committed 
but  one  sin  shall  be  transformed  into  an 
animal,  whatever  his  good  deeds.  He  who 
gives  a  Jew  unclean  flesh  to  eat,  his  soul 
shall  enter  a  leaf,  to  be  tossed  hither  and 
thither  by  the  wind  ;  for  it  is  said  :  "  We 
all  do  fade  as  a  leaf,  and  our  iniquities,  like 
the  wind,  have  taken  us  away  "  (Isa.  Ixiv,  6). 
He  who  speaks  evil,  his  soul  shall  enter  a 
stone,  like  the  soul  of  Nabal ;  for  it  is 
said  :  "  His  heart  died  within  him  and  he 
became  as  a  stone  "  (i  Sam.  xxv,  37).  Thus 
it  is  clear  that  in  these  cases  a  belief  in 
93 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

metempsychosis  is  extorted  from  extra- 
vagant interpretations  of  Biblical  texts. 
These  pedantic  hair-splitting  methods  of 
exegesis  are  found  to  produce  an  even  more 
brilliant  result,  in  the  supposed  discovery 
that  the  soul  of  Cain  must  have  passed  into 
the  body  of  Jethro,  and  the  soul  of  Abel 
into  the  body  of  Moses,  because  Jethro  gave 
Moses  his  daughter  to  wife.  A  similar  idea, 
that  a  bond  of  sympathy  between  two  men 
pointed  to  their  relationship  in  a  former 
life,  was  not  alien  even  to  such  a  writer  as 
Goethe,  as  we  shall  afterwards  see. 

IN   ISLAM 

The  great  religions  of  the  world,  Islam 
and  Christianity,  have  no  official  place  for 
the  reception  of  metempsychosis  ;  the  doc- 
trine made  its  way,  for  the  most  part,  into 
those  sects  which  were  especially  open  to 
foreign  influence.  Such,  among  the  Moham- 
medans, were  the  sects  of  the  so-called 
Mutazilites,  the  Druses  and  the  Nossairians. 
94 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

Quite  recently,  an  American,  Samuel  Ives 
Curtiss,  explored  the  Hermon  and  Lebanon 
districts,  the  homes  of  the  Druses  and 
Nossairians,  more  thoroughly  than  any 
previous  traveller,  and  extracts  from  his 
diaries  provide  some  information  upon  their 
beliefs.  It  appears  that,  after  the  sacrifice 
of  the  usual  offerings,  the  soul  of  the  dead 
man  may  go  forth  by  an  opening  over  the 
house  door  and  enter  the  body  of  a  child 
on  the  eve  of  birth  ;  only  the  soul  of  a  good_ 
man  can  enter  a  human  body  :  the  souls  of^  / 
bad  men  enter  animals.  These  statements 
are  in  almost  literal  agreement  with  the 
account  given  of  the  Druses  of  the  Hermon 
in  the  twelfth  century  by  the  learned  Rabbi 
Joseph  of  Tudela,  who  made  a  journey  to 
the  east. 

IN   THE  CHRISTIAN  WORLD 

Within  the  Christian  world  the  doctrine 
of  metempsychosis  was  adopted  during  the 
first   centuries    by   isolated    Gnostic   sects, 
95 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

and  especially  by  the  so-called  Manichaeans 
in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  :  it  was 
invariably  denied  by  the  official  church,  as 
represented  by  Tertullian,  Irenaeus,  Origen, 
Augustine,  etc.  We  are  reminded  of  the 
passage  quoted  previously  from  the  Upani- 
shads,  when  Bishop  Epiphanius,  the  famous 
opponent  of  all  heretics,  says  of  Mani,  the 
founder  of  the  Manichaean  sect,  that  he  con- 
ceives the  souls  of  men  and  other  living 
things  to  rise  after  death  from  the  twelve 
signs  of  the  Zodiac  in  figures  of  light. 
Thence  they  reach  their  vessel.  The  moon 
and  sun  are  ships.  The  smaller  ship  bears 
the  burden  for  fifteen  days,  while  the  moon 
is  growing  full :  after  fifteen  days  the 
burden  is  transferred  to  the  larger  ship,  the 
sun.  This  great  ship,  the  sun,  carries  them 
to  the  aeon  of  life  and  to  the  place  of  the 
blessed.  This,  however,  is  the  destiny  only 
of  the  good,  or  "  true/'  i.e.  real  Manichaeans. 
As  regards  the  less  good,  Mani  recognises 
three  classes  of  men  in  general :  beside  the 
96 


IN   OTHER  QUARTERS 

true,  there  are  the  half-Manichaeans,  the  so- 
called  "  hearkeners,"  on  the  one  side,  and, 
on  the  other,  the  non-Manichaeans.  We 
learn  from  the  polemical  writings  of  Augus- 
tine the  two-fold  fate  which  awaits  these 
two  classes  :  after  death  the  souls  of  the 
"  hearkeners,"  in  the  most  fortunate  cases, 
re-enter  the  body  of  a  man,  who  becomes 
one  of  the  "  true/*  or  they  enter  trees  and 
plants,  the  fruit  of  which  is  eaten  by  the 
"  true  "  :  melons  and  cucumbers  are  es- 
pecially mentioned  as  thus  eaten,  and  in 
this  way  the  soul  reaches  purification.  The 
souls  of  the  non-Manichaeans,  if  not  con- 
demned everlastingly,  enter  lowly  and  fruit- 
less plants,  which  the  Manichaeans  believed 
to  derive  their  nourishment  from  the  earth 
and  not  from  the  sunshine  and  free  air,  or 
they  enter  the  bodies  of  animals.  Some 
surprise  may  be  aroused  by  the  belief  that 
reincarnation  in  an  animal  was  regarded  as 
inferior  to  that  in  a  fruit-bearing  plant. 
Such  indeed  was  the  opinion,  strange  as  it 
H  97 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

may  seem,  of  the  Manichaeans,  who  regarded 
the  animal  world  as  inferior  in  the  scale  of 
creation  to  the  vegetable  world. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  traditions  of 
Manichsean  gnosticism  were  continued  by 
the  numerous  sects  known  collectively  as 
Cathari.  The  acts  of  the  Inquisition  pro- 
vide much  interesting  matter  from  which 
we  may  gain  a  knowledge  of  their  theory  of 
metempsychosis, :  these  documents  have  been 
admirably  co-ordinated  by  the  famous 
ecclesiastical  historian  Ignaz  von  Dollinger 
in  his  "  Contributions  to  the  History  of 
Mediaeval  Sectarianism/'  The  Cathari  be- 
lieved that  the  soul  was  forced  to  migrate 
from  body  to  body,  until  it  became  re- 
incarnate in  a  member  of  the  sect,  that  it 
might  then  be  absolved  of  all  guilt  by  the 
sacrament  of  the  laying-on  of  hands,  and 
be  received  into  Paradise  after  death. 

/"  When  souls/'  they  taught,  "leave  men's 
bodies  after  death  they  are  so  tortured  by 

Nthe  demons  of  the  air  that  they  yearn  to 
98 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

find  protection  in  some  body.  Hence 
these  souls  will  enter  even  the  bodies  of 
animals,  and  many  could  well  remember  the 
period  of  their  sojourn  in  a  horse -hide. 
They  could  even  relate  how,  when  they 
were  horses,  they  lost  a  shoe  at  this  or  that 
place  :  curious  believers  then  made  search 
at  the  place  indicated  and  actually  found  a 
rusty  horse-shoe.  This  story  often  recurs 
in  the  statements  of  the  Cathari."  It  is  a 
striking  instance  of  the  power  of  suggestion 
in  matters  of  faith.  "  Many  believed  that 
they  had  passed  through  hundreds  of  bodies. 
Paul  was  said  to  have  passed  through 
thirteen  bodies,  according  to  some,  and 
through  thirty-two,  according  to  others, 
before  he  attained  the  grace  of  God/' 
Connected  with  the  belief  in  metempsychosis 
is  the  prohibition  against  killing  and  eating 
animals,  which  was  no  less  binding  upon 
the  Cathari  than  upon  the  Manichaeans  and 
Indians. 

This  belief  affected  mediaeval  scholasti- 
99 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

cism  and  did  not,  indeed,  lose  its  influence 
until  modern  times :  it  is  apparent  be- 
neath the  vigorous  lines  of  the  philosopher 
of  the  Renaissance,  Giordano  Bruno  (1548- 
1600). 

"  Go  then,  fool,  and  tremble  beneath  the  sword  of 

Death. 
Tremble   and   quake   at  the  talk  of  fools  :    in 

quivering  anguish 
List  to  the  foolish  prate  of  the  crowd,  as  if  thou 

wert  nothing, 
Nothing,  in  sooth,  but  the  dust  of  the  earth  and 

a  clod  from  the  fallow. 
Is  not  thy  body  for  ever  transformed,  and  flows  it 

-    not  ever 

Into  the  river  of  time?    And  in  ceaseless  alter- 
nation 
Doth  it  not  cast  off  the  old  for  the  new,  ever 

losing  and  gaining  ? 
Art  so  mad  as  to  think  that  thy  poor  corporeal 

substance, 
Whether  in  whole  or  in  part,  for  ever  shall  be  as 

it  has  been  ? 
Art  so  mad  as  to  dream  that  the  bones  and  the 

flesh  of  thy  boyhood 
Still  shall  abide  with  thee  now  ?  that  thou  comest 

unchanged  to  thy  manhood  ? 
Seest  thou  not  how  thy  limbs,  renewed  in  the 

process  of  change, 

100 


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Take  to  themselves  new  form  ?  .  .  .  Yet  ever  one 

nature  persisting 

Ruling  within  thy  heart  is  forming  for  ever  a  being, 
Thou   thyself,   that   one   and   the   same  abidest 

unchanging. 


Thus  springs  life  into  light  and  bodies  rise  to 

perfection  ; 
Out  of  the  hidden  seed  thy  being  expands  and 

increases, 
What  time  the  spirit-builder  collects  and  gathers 

the  atoms, 
Welds  them  to  form,  and  breathes  in  a  spirit,  and 

guides  the  creation 
Up  to  time  when  the  fetters  that  bind  the  life  are 

broken, 
And  back  to  the  seed  flies  the  spirit,  but  thence 

he  again  re-enters 
The   world  eternal  and   ageless.     And   this   is 

'  death '  to  mortals, 
Since  in  their  folly  they  know  not  the  light  to 

which  we  hasten." 

In  the  seventeenth  century  a  different 
picture  comes  before  us  in  the  person  of  the 
philosopher  or  theosophist  Franciscus  Mer- 
curius  van  Helmont  (1618-1699),  who  at- 
tempted to  revive  the  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis in  its  crudest  form.  His  is  a 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

picture  which  borders  upon  caricature,  and 
is  not  likely  to  be  regarded  seriously  by  any 
one  who  learns  the  complacency  with  which 
he  prided  himself  upon  discovering  the 
elixir  of  life  and  the  philosopher's  stone. 
It  was  he  who  devoted  his  acumen  to  prov- 
ing in  his  first  published  work  that  Hebrew 
was  the  natural  language  of  mankind,  and 
would  naturally  rise  to  the  lips  of  every 
human  being,  even  of  the  deaf  and  dumb, 
were  it  not  for  the  disturbing  influence  of 
human  society  !  In  1662  he  was  called 
before  the  Inquisition  at  Rome  to  answer 
for  his  heretical  belief  in  metempsychosis, 
but  he  did  not  attain  the  honour  of  martyr- 
dom. 

Only  passing  mention  need  be  made  of 
Emanuel  Swedenborg,  the  famous  founder 
of  the  "  New  Church  of  the  Heavenly 
Jerusalem "  (1688-1772).  He  cannot  be 
considered  as  a  supporter  of  metempsychosis 
in  the  full  sense  of  the  term.  But  he  evolved 
one  idea,  which  is,  for  instance,  the  basis  of 

102 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

the  whole  of  the  Indian  system  of  belief,  and 
carried  it  to  its  logical  consequences  with 
greater  consistency  than  any  other  thinker  : 
this  was  the  idea  that  a  man  becomes  after 
death  what  he  is  and  what  he  does  in  his 
earthly  life.  Thus,  for  instance,  he  says  : 
"  All  spirits  in  the  hells  appear  in  the  form 
of  their  own  evil :  for  everyone  there  is  an 
effigy  of  his  own  evil,  because  the  interiors 
and  exteriors  act  in  unity,  and  the  interiors 
are  visibly  exhibited  in  the  exteriors,  which 
are  the  face,  the  body,  the  speech,  and  the 
gestures,"  etc.  On  the  same  line  of  thought 
is  his  statement  elsewhere,  that  those  who 
possess  bestial  natures,  who  are,  for  instance, 
sly  as  foxes,  afterwards  appear  in  the  actual 
form  of  these  animals. 

During  the  classical  period  of  German 
literature  metempsychosis  attracted  such 
attention  that  that  period  may  almost  be 
styled  the  flourishing  epoch  of  the  doctrine. 
Reference  has  been  already  made  to  Goethe, 
who  was  inclined  to  explain  a  bond  of 
103 


r 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

sympathy  between  men  as  due  to  some 
relationship  in  a  former  state  of  existence. 

"  Ah,  in  the  depths  of  time  gone  by 
Thou  wast  my  sister  or  my  wife," 

he  says  to  Frau  von  Stein,  and  he  writes  to 
Wieland  (probably  in  April,  1776),  "  I  can- 
not explain  the  significance  to  me  of .  this 
woman  or  her  influence  over  me,  except  by 
the  theory  of  metempsychosis.  Yes,  we 
were  once  man  and  wife.  Now  our  know- 
ledge of  ourselves  is  veiled,  and  lies  in  the 
spirit  world.  I  can  find  no  name  for  us — the 
past,  the  future,  the  All !  "  In  a  letter  to 
Frau  von  Stein  under  date  July  2,  1781,  we 
also  read  :  "  How  well  it  is  that  men  should 
die,  if  only  to  erase  their  impressions  and 
return  clean  washed. " 

These  ideas  seem  to  have  been  in  the  air 
at  that  time,  and  continually  occupied  men's 
minds.  Lichtenberg  (1742-1799)  says  of 
himself  :  "I  cannot  avoid  the  idea  that  I 
died  before  I  was  born  "  ;  in  his  "  Aphor- 
isms "  also  we  meet  with  the  transmigra- 
104 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

tion  of  souls.  In  1783  Johann  Georg 
Schlosser,  Goethe's  brother-in-law,  wrote 
two  dialogues  upon  the  same  subject.  In 
the  same  year  appeared  the  posthumous 
dissertation  of  the  English  philosopher 
David  Hume  upon  "  The  Immortality  of 
the  Soul,"  in  which  he  declares  that  metem- 
psychosis is  the  only  theory  of  the  kind 
seriously  deserving  the  attention  of  philo- 
sophy. But  the  most  important  work  upon 
the  subject  belongs  to  the  year  1780,  when 
no  less  a  writer  than  Lessing  came  forward 
to  defend  the  theory.  Some  two  years 
previously  (in  his  posthumous  observations 
upon  Gampe's  philosophical  dialogues)  he 
had  indicated  his  opinion  in  the  words  : 
"  Is  it  after  all  so  certain  that  my  soul  has 
only  once  inhabited  the  form  of  man  ?  Is 
it  after  all  so  unreasonable  to  suppose  that 
my  soul,  upon  its  journey  to  perfection, 
should  have  been  forced  to  wear  this  fleshly 
veil  more  than  once  ?  Possibly  this  migra- 
tion of  the  soul  through  several  human 
105 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

bodies  was  based  on  a  new  system  of 
thought.  Possibly  this  new  system  was 
merely  the  oldest  of  all.  .  .  ."  Lessing 
refers  to  the  theory  of  metempsychosis  as 
nothing  more  than  a  "  hypothesis/'  and 
even  at  times  as  a  "  freak  of  imagination." 
But  in  §  95  of  his  work,  the  "  Education  of 
the  Human  Race,"  he  says  :  "  Is  this 
hypothesis  ridiculous  merely  because  it  is 
the  oldest,  because  the  human  intellect 
adopted  it  without  demur,  before  men's 
minds  had  been  distracted  and  weakened 
by  the  sophistry  of  the  schools  ?  "  "  On  the 
contrary,"  says  Lessing,  in  a  fragment,  "  the 
first  and  earliest  opinion  in  matters  of 
speculation  is  invariably  the  most  probable, 
because  it  was  immediately  accepted  by  the 
sound  understanding  of  mankind."  Hence 
attempts  have  been  made  to  use  the  doc- 
trine of  metempsychosis  as  a  key  to  explain 
the  whole  of  Lessing's  treatise.  This,  how- 
ever, is  a  mistake  :  he  merely  uses  the 
doctrine  upon  a  special  occasion  as  a  means 
1 06 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

to  justify  the  action  of  God  against  the 
argument  that  His  scheme  for  the  education 
of  the  human  race  excludes  a  number  of 
individuals  from  His  blessings.  "  This  is 
not  so,"  says  Lessing ;  on  the  contrary, 
"  the  path  by  which  the  race  is  to  arrive  at 
perfection  must  be  trodden  by  every  indi- 
vidual man  (early  and  late).  But  can  he  be 
supposed  to  have  traversed  this  path  in  one 
and  the  same  life  ?  Can  a  man  be  both  a 
sensual  Jew  and  a  spiritual  Christian  in  one 
and  the  same  life  ?  Can  he  surpass  both  of 
these  in  one  and  the  same  life  ?  Surely  not : 
but  why  should  not  every  individual  have 
lived  more  than  one  life  in  this  world  ?  " 
(§§  93> 94) •  Then,  in  high  enthusiasm,  Lessing 
pours  forth  the  eloquent  passage  which  forms 
the  famous  conclusion  of  his  "  Education  of 
the  Human  Race,"  his  "  religious  Testa- 
ment "  as  it  has  been  called  (§§  96-100). 
'  Why  should  I  not  at  one  time  have  taken 
those  steps  toward  perfection  which  can 
bring  but  temporal  rewards  and  punish- 
107 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

ments  to  men  ?  Why,  again,  should  I  not 
have  made  at  another  time  that  progress  to 
which  our  vision  of  eternal  reward  is  so 
great  a  help  ?  Why  should  I  not  return  as 
often  as  I  am  capable  of  acquiring  fresh 
knowledge  and  further  power  ?  Do  I 
achieve  so  much  in  one  sojourning  as  to 
make  it  not  worth  my  while  to  return  ? 
Never  !  Or,  is  it  that  I  forget  my  former 
sojourn  ?  Well  for  me  that  I  forget.  The 
recollection  of  my  former  state  would 
enable  me  to  turn  my  present  condition  to 
but  poor  account.  And  have  I  forgotten 
for  ever  what  I  must  forget  for  the  time 
being  ?  Or  is  it  that  I  should  lose  so  much 
time  ?  Lose  time  !  What  need  have  I  for 
haste  ?  Is  not  the  whole  of  eternity  mine  ?  " 
The  whole  of  eternity  belongs  to  the 
individual,  and  he  may  use  it  to  rise  upon 
the  long  ascent  of  self -development.  Such 
is  the  idea  of  Lessing,  which  is  found  more 
philosophically  expressed  in  a  fragment 
belonging  to  the  year  1777,  "  that  man  may 
1 08 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

have  more  than  five  senses/'  The  essential 
points  of  the  fragment  are  as  follows  :  the 
soul  is  a  simple  form  of  existence,  capable 
of  an  infinite  number  of  impressions.  But 
it  is  also  a  finite  being.  Hence  these  infinite 
impressions  are  only  experienced  gradually 
in  an  infinite  course  of  time.  The  order 
and  proportion  in  which  these  impressions 
are  slowly  acquired  are  due  to  the  senses. 
But  the  five  senses  which  we  at  present  use 
are  not  primordial.  Nature  never  pro- 
gresses by  leaps  and  bounds  ;  therefore  the 
soul  must  have  passed  through  all  the 
stages  inferior  to  that  on  which  it  now  finds 
itself.  It  is  therefore  probable  that  man 
passed  through  a  former  life  with  fewer 
senses,  and  that  he  has  traversed  stages  of 
existence  marked  by  varying  combinations 
of  senses.  This  idea  is  combined  with  the 
further  idea  that  every  particle  of  matter 
can  be  useful  to  the  soul  in  the  development 
of  a  sense,  and  Lessing  is  thus  led  to  assume 
that  additional  senses  must  be  possible  :  as, 
109 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

for  instance,  the  sense  of  sight  responds  to 
light,  so  special  senses  could  and  certainly 
will  respond  to  electrical  and  magnetic 
stimulus,  and  will  inform  us  directly  whether 
bodies  are  electrified  or  magnetised,  which 
information  can  now  be  gained  only  by 
means  of  special  research.  A  new  world  of 
the  most  marvellous  phenomena  will  then 
be  open  to  us,  of  which  we  can  now  conceive 
no  more  than  early  opticians  knew  of  light 
and  colour. 

As  Lessing  tells  us,  his  theory  of  metem- 
psychosis was  based  upon  the  ideas  of 
Charles  Bonnet,  a  physicist  of  Geneva,  who 
wrote  a  treatise  in  French  in  1769  upon 
philosophical  palingenesis  (rebirth),  giving 
many  so-called  proofs  to  show  how  from 
the  original  matter  of  the  brain  all  created 
beings  were  transformed  from  corporeal  to 
ethereal  natures.  Bonnet 's  ideas  seem  to 
have  fallen  upon  fruitful  soil  elsewhere.  In 
1770  Lavater  translated  his  treatise  into 
German  with  annotations,  and  his  social 
no 


IN  OTHER  QUARTERS 

environment  also  shows  how  the  belief  in 
soul-transmigration  haunted  the  minds  of 
that  age.  But  not  always  were  the  best 
minds  attracted,  and  as  the  doctrine  gained 
adherents  it  lost  seriousness,  for  which  reason 
it  probably  became  once  more  unfashionable 
and  discredited.  Light  is  thrown  upon  this 
downward  course  by  manuscript  entries  in 
the  diary  of  a  woman  of  Zurich,  who  may 
be  quoted  as  an  eye-witness  of  that  interest- 
ing period.  She  says  :  "  The  friends  of 
Lavater  at  Copenhagen  believe  in  a  trans- 
migration of  the  soul.  They  believe  that 
several  of  Jesus'  apostles  live  again  on 
earth,  without  any  recollection  of  their 
former  lives  as  apostles.  Prince  Karl  of 
Hesse  was  the  apostle  Peter,  and  the  Danish 
minister  of  state,  Andreas  of  Bernsdorf,  was 
Thomas.  Lavater  was  once  King  Josiah  of 
Judah;  then  he  became  Joseph  of  Arimathea, 
and  then  the  reformer  Ulrich  Zwingli.  The 
apostle  John  is  still  alive,  as  Jesus  fore- 
told, knows  who  he  is,  and  can  remember 
in 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

his  life  with  Jesus.  He  travels  much  about 
the  world,  and  can  assume  different  forms 
in  order  to  avoid  recognition.  He  is  a  free- 
mason, and  first  visited  Prince  Karl  of  Hesse 
to  ask  his  help  as  a  brother  mason.  Prince 
Karl  gave  him  some  help  and  then  dis- 
missed him  without  paying  any  attention 
to  him  or  realising  with  whom  he  was 
talking.  Shortly  afterwards  the  Prince 
received  a  letter  from  another  mason,  re- 
proaching him  for  his  neglect  of  this  import- 
ant traveller,  and  telling  him  that  the  man 
was  St.  John,  who  would  visit  him  again. 
John  did,  in  fact,  return  and  made  himself 
known  to  Peter,  whose  attention  was  now 
aroused.  .  .  ."  Such  is  the  account  given 
by  the  lady  of  Zurich.  The  fact  that  this 
royal  Peter  failed  to  understand  the  real 
character  of  his  saintly  mendicant  brother 
was  due  to  the  strange  illusions  of  suggestion: 
from  this  point  of  view  the  story  will  appear 
to  be  correctly  placed  in  the  book  from 
which  I  have  quoted  it  (Otto  Stoll,  "  Sug- 

112 


IN   OTHER  QUARTERS 

gestion  and  Hypnotism  in  Racial  Pys- 
chology  "). 

Thinkers  of  great  self-restraint  called  for 
the  abandonment  of  these  theories.  Herder's 
three  dialogues  upon  the  transmigration  of 
the  soul  (dated  1791)  are  marked  by  greater 
naturalness  of  feeling.  "  To  purify  the 
heart  and  to  ennoble  the  soul  and  all  its 
instincts  and  desires,  this  seems  to  me  the 
true  palingenesis  of  the  present  life,  after 
which  there  certainly  awaits  us  a  higher 
and  brighter  metempsychosis,  but  one  of 
which  we  know  nothing/' 

We  shall  not  attempt  to  follow  isolated 
traces  of  this  belief  which  mark  divergencies 
from  the  general  course  of  intellectual 
progress  during  the  nineteenth  century  and 
have  been  left  by  solitary  and  original 
thinkers,  whose  names  are  partly  unknown. 
When  the  theory  of  metempsychosis  has 
appeared  in  modern  times  it  has  usually 
come  from  foreign  sources,  as  the  inseparable 
companion  of  the  Indian,  and  especially  of 
i  113 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  Buddhist  ideas  which  the  West  has  been 
only  too  ready  to  receive.  A  conspicuous 
instance  of  the  fact  is  to  be  found  in  Schopen- 
hauer. His  references  to  metempsychosis 
are  certainly  favourable  :  he  praises  it  as  a 
most  admirable  statement  of  theory  in 
mythical  form  and  declares  :  "  Never  has 
a  myth,  and  never  will  a  myth  be  more 
closely  connected  with  philosophical  truth, 
which  is  difficult  to  grasp,  than  this  primaeval 
doctrine  professed  by  a  most  noble  and 
ancient  race/'  And  again  :  "  The  myth  of 
the  transmigration  of  souls  has  this  great 
advantage,  that  it  contains  no  elements 
except  those  which  lie  before  our  eyes  in 
the  sphere  of  actuality,  so  that  it  is  able  in 
consequence  to  provide  ocular  proof  of  its 
conceptions  " — a  statement  which  should  at 
least  be  qualified  with  a  note  of  interroga- 
tion. Schopenhauer  has  even  been  included 
by  some  critics  among  the  professed  adher- 
ents of  this  belief.  Consider,  for  instance, 
the  passage  in  his  "  Parerga  and  Paralipo- 
114 


IN   OTHER  QUARTERS 

mena  "  :  "  Constantly  as  the  pieces  played 
and  the  masks  worn  upon  the  stage  of  the 
world  may  change,  yet  the  players  remain 
the  same  throughout.  We  sit  in  company 
and  talk  and  grow  excited  :  eyes  light  up  and 
voices  ring  clearer  :  but  so  did  others  sit  a 
thousand  years  ago  :  they  and  the  scene 
were  the  same,  and  so  shall  it  be  a  thousand 
years  hence.  The  mechanism  which  pre- 
vents our  realisation  of  this  fact  is  time." 
To  assert  that  the  players  are  identical 
might  seem  tantamount  to  admitting  the 
theory  of  metempsychosis.  But  in  this  very 
passage  Schopenhauer  makes  a  definite 
distinction  between  metempsychosis,  "  the 
transference  of  the  so-called  soul  in  its 
totality  to  another  body/'  and  the  theory 
which  he  supports,  palingenesis  or  rebirth, 
"  the  decomposition  and  reconstruction  of  a 
personality,  in  which  process  the  will  alone 
persists,  assumes  the  form  of  a  new  organism, 
and  receives  a  new  intellect/'  In  this 
sense  must  be  interpreted  another  famous 
us 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

passage  in  his  work  ("The  World  as  Will 
and  Imagination  ")  where  he  speaks  of  the 
mysterious  connection  between  the  death 
of  an  existing  individual  and  the  birth  of  a 
new  personality,  as  shown  by  the  fact  (?) 
that  the  more  individuals  die,  the  more  are 
born.  "  Every  new-born  being  enters  its 
new  existence  joyously  and  enjoys  it  as  a 
gift ;  but  there  is  and  can  be  no  gift  in 
question.  His  new  life  is  bought  by  the  age 
and  death  of  an  organism  that  has  lived  its 
span,  but  contains  the  indestructible  germ 
from  which  new  life  springs.  The  old  and 
the  new  are  one  being.  To  show  the  link 
connecting  them  would  be  to  solve  a  very 
difficult  problem/'  How  impossible  it  was 
for  Schopenhauer  to  solve  this  problem  by  a 
direct  appeal  to  metempsychosis  must  be 
plain  to  everyone  who  has  grasped  his 
fundamental  principle  that  Nature  is  careful 
of  the  type  and  not  of  the  individual,  and 
that  her  chief  endeavour  is  the  maintenance 
of  the  species. 

116 


IN   OTHER  QUARTERS 

On  the  other  hand,  the  theory  of  metem- 
psychosis proper  may  be  found  in  modern 
dramatic  literature.  A  case  in  point  is 
Ibsen's  "  Caesar  and  Galilean/7  in  which  the 
mysterious  Mephistopheles  -  figure  of  Maxi- 
mus  says  to  the  Emperor  Julian  :  "  One 
there  is  who  ever  returns  to  the  life  of  the 
human  race  within  a  certain  space  of  time. 
He  is  like  a  rider  attempting  to  break  a  wild 
horse  in  the  riding  school.  Time  after  time 
the  horse  throws  him.  But  a  while  and  he 
is  in  the  saddle  again,  a  little  more  firmly 
seated  and  with  more  experience  :  and  yet 
fall  he  must  in  his  various  forms  even  to  this 
day.  He  was  doomed  to  fall  as  the  man 
divinely  wrought  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  : 
he  was  doomed  to  fall  as  the  founder  of  a 
world-wide  empire,  or  as  the  prince  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Who  knows  how  many 
times  he  has  been  among  us  unrecognised  ? 
Knowest  thou,  Julian,  that  thou  wast  not  in 
him  whom  now  thou  persecutest  ?  "  (i.e.  the 
"Galilean,"  Christ).  Julian  himself,  in  the 
117 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

first  part  of  the  play,  gives  utterance  to  a 
similar  thought.  "  In  each  of  the  changing 
generations  was  one  soul,  in  which  Adam 
rose  again  in  purity  :  he  was  mighty  in 
Moses  the  lawgiver  :  he  had  strength  to 
subdue  the  world  in  Alexander  of  Macedon  : 
he  was  almost  perfect  (Julian,  the  "  apos- 
tate," is  speaking)  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth/' 


118 


CHAPTER    VI 
CONCLUSION 

IN  concluding  this  brief  review  of  the 
systems  under  which  the  doctrine  of 
metempsychosis  has  been  formulated  in  the 
course  of  history,  we  may  venture  to  quote 
a  passage  which  will  carry  us  back  several 
centuries  :  it  is  probably  its  noblest  expres- 
sion for  all  time  ;  it  is  taken  from  the 
famous  Persian  mystic  Djelal-eddin-Rumi 
(1207-1273),  and  may  be  rendered  as 
follows  : 

"  A  stone  I  died  and  rose  again  a  plant, 
A  plant  I  died  and  rose  an  animal ; 
I  died  an  animal  and  was  born  a  man.* 

*  cp.   Herder's  "Thought  of  the  Origin  and  Growth  of 
a  Child's  Life." 

"  When  in  thy  mother's  womb  thou  tookest  thy  life 
From  twain,  and  all  unconscious  of  thyself, 
Plant-like,  wast  hanging  on  another's  heart, 
Didst  grow  to  animal  and  a  child  of  man, 
So  say  they — earnest  to  the  light  of  day." 

From  the  poem,  "The  Ego." 
119 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

Why  should  I  fear  ?    What  have  I  lost  by  death  ? 
As  man,  death  sweeps  me  from  this  world  of  men 
That  I  may  wear  an  angel's  wings  in  heaven  : 
Yet  e'en  as  angel  may  I  not  abide, 
For  nought  abideth  save  the  face  of  God. 
Thus  o'er  the  angels'  world  I  wing  my  way 
Onwards  and  upwards,  unto  boundless  heights  ; 
Then  let  me  be  as  nought,  for  in  my  breast 
Rings  as  a  harp-song,  that  we  must  return 
To  Him." 

In  such  words  as  these  we  can  catch  the 
expression  of  that  instinct  which  leads  all 
men,  whether  they  live  under  an  Eastern  or 
Western  sky,  directly  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  are  not  "  complete  "  :  we  feel  that  we 
are  growing  and  aspiring,  and  that  one  life 
is  not  enough  to  enable  us  to  reach  that 
perfection  whither  we  are  urged  by  the  in- 
most depths  of  our  being.  Or  do  we  not 
feel  that  our  progress  within  this  one  life 
must  force  us  to  cry  in  the  fine  words  of 
Riickert : 

"  Oh  !  for  a  longer  life  !     Thou  knowest  thy  faults 

and  failings, 

How  they  forbid  thee  yet  to  make  thy  home  with 
the  angels  "  ? 

120 


CONCLUSION 


The  fulfilment  of  this  desire  is  shattered  by 
the  stern  fact  of  death,  and  then  the  doctrine 
of  metempsychosis  in  its  noblest  form  comes 
to  compensate  the  ever-present  conscious- 
ness of  human  inadequacy.  It  is  essentially 
the  same  instinct  which  found  expression  in 
Roman  Catholicism  in  the  conception  of  a 
purgatorial  fire.  Metempsychosis  and  purga- 
tory are  simply  more  or  less  anthropo- 
morphic methods  of  expressing  the  same 
instinct.  But  as  that  instinct  is  true  for 
man,  so  do  these  beliefs  undoubtedly  con- 
tain a  germ  of  truth,  and  on  this  germ  they 
live,  as  all  beliefs  live  upon  the  fragmentary 
truth  which  they  hide  within  them.  The 
moral  and  educational  importance  of  the 
belief  in  metempsychosis  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  manifestation  of  that  instinct  and 
also  an  evidence  of  the  belief  that  all  human 
action  will  be  inevitably  rewarded  or  pun- 
ished, a  belief  especially  native  to  Indian 
soil,  and  this  is  an  importance  which  must 
not  be  under-estimated.  In  so  far  as  the 

121 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

theory  is  based  upon  the  supposition  that  a 
personal  divine  power  exists  and  dis- 
penses this  retributive  justice,  and  that  the 
soul  must  climb  a  long  steep  path  to  ap- 
proach this  power,  does  metempsychosis 
preserve  its  religious  character.  This,  how- 
ever, is  not  all :  the  theory  is  also  the  ex- 
pression of  another  idea,  which  gives  it  a 
philosophical  character.  It  is  the  earliest 
intellectual  attempt  of  man,  when  consider- 
ing the  world  and  his  position  in  it,  to  con- 
ceive that  world,  not  as  alien  to  him,  but  as 
akin  to  him,  and  to  incorporate  himself  and 
his  life  as  an  indispensable  and  eternal 
element  in  the  past  and  future  of  the  world 
with  which  it  forms  one  comprehensive 
totality.  I  say  an  eternal  element,  because, 
regarded  philosophically,  the  belief  in  metem- 
psychosis seems  a  kind  of  unconscious  antici- 
pation of  the  principle  now  known  as  the 
"  conservation  of  energy/'  Nothing  that 
has  ever  existed  can  be  lost  either  in  life  * 

*  The  publisher  has  called  my  attention  to  the  following 
verse  of  Christian  Wagner  (born  1835),  in  which  he  ex- 
122 


CONCLUSION 


or  by  death.  All  is  but  change,  and  hence 
souls  do  not  perish,  but  return  again  and 
again  in  ever- changing  forms.  Moreover, 
later  developments  of  metempsychosis,  es- 
pecially as  conceived  by  Lessing,  can  with- 
out difficulty  be  harmonised  with  the 
modern  idea  of  evolution  from  higher  to 
lower  forms. 

But  at  this  point  we  see  the  truth,  as  soon 
as  the  depths  are  plumbed  a  little  deeper, 
of  a  statement  of  Goethe  (to  Eckermann, 
on  i  September,  1829)  :  "  Immortality,  the 
nature  of  the  soul  and  its  connection  with 
the  body,  are  eternal  problems  concerning 
which  philosophers  can  give  us  no  help." 
Historically,  as  we  have  clearly  seen  through- 
out our  examination  of  this  subject,  the 

presses  the  thought  of  a  "  metempsychosis  during  the  course 
of  life." 

"  Yea,  thy  fragrant  breath — who  knows? 
May  lend  fragrance  to  the  rose  ; 
All  the  love  that  it  expressed 
May  be  rosebuds  at  thy  breast ; 
Breaths  of  distant  childhood  yet 
Greet  thee  in  the  violet." 
123 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

belief  in  metempsychosis  is  profoundly 
rooted  in  the  superstitious  theory  of  the 
world,  the  so-called  "  animism "  main- 
tained by  primitive  man,  whose  childlike 
simplicity  led  him  to  regard  every  being  in 
his  environment  as  made  in  his  own  image, 
of  which  again  his  idea  was  no  less  simple, 
as  in  short  endowed  with  souls  ("  animse  ") 
like  his  own.  Are  our  views  to  remain  upon 
the  level  of  the  beliefs  of  primitive  man  ? 
Surely  we  should  not  run  the  risk  of  also 
losing  ourselves  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
objective  world,  but  should  rather  consider 
that  the  time  is  at  hand  to  think  of  the 
manhood  within  us  and  to  differentiate  this 
element  from  all  external  beings  below  the 
level  of  humanity.  But  at  the  same  time 
we  do  not  thus  strengthen  the  claim  of  our 
own  souls  to  a  past  of  their  own  :  indeed, 
a  modern  thinker  cannot  evade  the  strong 
impression  made  by  scientific  instruction  in 
the  facts  of  heredity.  Assuming  that  my 
soul  has  entered  my  present  body,  after  a 
124 


CONCLUSION 


greater  or  less  interval  of  time,  from  a  former 
body  in  which  I  once  lived,  how  am  I  to 
explain  the  strong  likeness  which  unques- 
tionably connects  me  with  my  parents  and 
my  family  ?  It  is  a  similarity  which  in- 
cludes spirit  and  mind  as  well  as  body.  We 
have  indeed  had  occasion  to  point  out  that 
this  very  fact  of  family  likeness  was  a  par- 
tial stimulus  to  the  belief  in  metempsy- 
chosis, in  so  far  as  attempts  were  made  to 
explain  family  resemblances  by  assuming 
that  the  soul  of  a  dead  ancestor  had  become 
reincarnate  (see  above,  p.  26).  But  how  can 
the  likeness  of  a  child  to  its  living  parents 
be  explained  ?  The  following  answer  has 
been  given:  "As  surely  as  the  particles  of 
oxygen  will  leave  particles  of  other  gases  for 
their  own  kind,  so  will  the  karma-laden  soul 
(i.e.  the  soul  burdened  with  the  consequences 
of  its  former  actions)  seek  the  mode  of  in- 
carnation with  which  it  is  brought  into 
connection  by  a  mysterious  power  of  attrac- 
tion/' In  this  phrase,  from  the  works  of 
125 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

the  .well-known  theosophist  Sinnett,  the 
suspicious  element  to  me  is  the  word 
"  mysterious/'  Just  where  we  require 
enlightenment  mystery  seems  to  prevail, 
and  this  fact  is  enough  to  show  that  metem- 
psychosis can  never  be  more  than  a  hypo- 
thesis at  best.  It  is  a  hypothesis  utterly 
incapable  of  explaining  such  facts  as  the 
increase  of  degeneracy  in  families  of  drunk- 
ards :  the  children  bear  the  heavy  burden 
that  parents  and  grandparents  have  raised, 
each  member  adding  his  own  contribution 
to  the  whole.  Many  have  witnessed  the 
tragical  struggle  waged  by  the  children  of 
such  parents,  striving  with  all  their  might 
and  shrinking  from  no  laudable  endeavour 
to  shake  off  the  crushing  burden,  and  per- 
haps falling  at  last  beneath  its  weight.  The 
fact  is  that  we  can  never  break  with  a  past, 
though  it  is  foreign  to  us.  Consciously  we 
may  refuse  to  admit  its  connection  with 
ourselves,  but  unconsciously,  under  the 
mask  of  what  we  desire  to  be,  there  will 
126 


CONCLUSION 


always  be  a  hint  of  what  we  have  acquired 
from  others,  and  perhaps  from  our  nearest 
and  dearest. 

"  Each  word  that  we  may  speak,  and  in  the  face 
Each  feature  is  another's,  yet  is  ours, 
Our  very  own,  yet  lent  us  but  for  use. 
Thus,  ever  changing,  alternating,  creeps 
The  holder  of  another's  goods  through  life." 
Herder,  "  The  Ego." 

Passing  reference  has  been  made  to  the  fact 
that  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis  is  in- 
consistent with  the  constant  increase  of  the 
world's  population.  Whence  come  these 
ever-increasing  souls  ?  Undue  stress,  how- 
ever, must  not  be  laid  upon  this  argument, 
which  is  admittedly  anthropomorphic  and 
inadequate  as  a  means  of  criticism. 

When  the  idea  of  strict  moral  retribution 
becomes  dominant  in  the  theory  of  metem- 
psychosis, the  moral  importance  of  the  doc- 
trine is  materially  limited  by  the  fact  that 
the  individual  soul  in  process  of  migration 
through  several  bodies  preserves  no  recollec- 
tion of  former  existences  or  of  actions  per- 
127 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

formed  during  them.  Buddha,  Pythagoras, 
and  others  are  certainly  said  to  have  been 
able  to  view  the  whole  series  of  their  former 
lives.  These,  however,  are  purely  miracu- 
lous cases,  and  whatever  view  of  their 
occurrence  may  be  adopted,  the  fact  remains 
that  ordinary  mortals  do  not  enjoy  the 
advantages  of  this  special  capacity.  But 
may  not  the  ordinary  man  discover  within 
himself  some  dim  traces  of  this  memory  of 
past  lives  ?  Many  have  found  themselves 
in  circumstances  which  they  seemed  to 
know  by  past  experience,  though  unable  to 
state  that  they  had  ever  encountered  a 
similar  situation  in  their  present  lives.  "  I 
came  to  places  and  found  myself  in  circum- 
stances where  I  could  have  sworn  that  I  had 
already  been.  I  saw  people  with  whom  I 
thought  I  had  lived  and  upon  whose  old 
acquaintanceship  I  was  ready  to  rely " : 
these  words  Herder  places  in  the  mouth  of 
his  Theages  in  his  first  dialogue  upon  the 
transmigration  of  the  soul.  But  when  his 
128 


CONCLUSION 


interlocutor  Charicles  can  suggest  no  other 
explanation  of  these  experiences  than  "  re- 
collection of  a  former  state  of  existence/'  the 
further  assertions  of  Theages  may  serve  as  a 
warning  against  such  premature  conclusions. 
His  words  may  therefore  be  quoted  at  length, 
as  his  argument  has  not  now  lost  its  value, 
notwithstanding  the  somewhat  exalted  style 
in  which  it  is  propounded  and  which  was 
characteristic  of  the  spirit  of  that  age. 

Theages  says  :  "  Have  you  never  ob- 
served in  your  own  case  how  the  soul  is  ever 
busy  within  itself  ?  How,  especially  in 
childhood  and  youth,  it  makes  plans,  co- 
ordinates ideas,  builds  bridges,  imagines 
stories,  and  dreamily  repeats  all  these  im- 
aginings decked  with  the  magical  colouring 
of  dreams  ?  Watch  that  child  quietly 
playing  and  talking  to  himself.  As  he  talks 
he  is  in  a  dream  of  living  pictures.  Some 
day  these  pictures  and  thoughts  will  come 
back  to  him,  at  a  time  when  he  does  not 
expect  them  and  cannot  tell  whence  they 
K  129 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

come.  They  will  come  before  him  with  all 
the  scenic  decoration  in  which  he  first 
conceived  them,  or  in  which  some  dream 
of  his  youth  first  created  them.  The  situa- 
tion will  become  an  agreeable  delusion  to 
his  mind,  as  every  act  of  recollection  which 
is  easy  and  fruitful  in  idea  is  delusive  :  he 
will  regard  it  as  an  inspiration  from  another 
world,  because  it  comes  in  that  character, 
namely,  without  trouble  and  with  a  wealth 
of  imagery.  One  single  feature  in  the  scene 
immediately  before  him  may  suffice  to 
recall  this  past :  one  single  chord  vibrating 
to  his  heart  will  arouse  the  slumbering 
melodies  of  past  times.  These  are  moments 
of  sweetest  exaltation,  especially  amid  wild 
and  beautiful  scenery,  or  in  pleasant  con- 
verse with  those  whom  we  unexpectedly 
regard  as  friends  of  an  older  time,  because 
we  are  sweetly  deceived  in  them,  or  they 
in  us  :  recollections  of  paradise,  not  of  a 
human  life  already  lived,  but  of  the  para- 
dise of  youth,  of  childhood  and  its  happy 
130 


CONCLUSION 


dreams  which  came  to  us  sleeping  or  waking, 
and  are,  in  very  truth,  real  paradise.  Thus 
palingenesis  is  a  truth,  not  so  marvellous, 
however,  as  you  supposed,  but  very  natural/' 
If  we  wish  to  test  an  instance,  one  comes 
to  us  almost  unsought,  in  Holderlin's  words 
to  Diotima,  which  were  written  about  the 
same  time. 

"  Diotima  !     Noble  being  ! 
Mine  by  kinship's  holy  tie, 
Sister,  ere  my  hand  I  gave  thee, 
Long  I  knew  thee  lovingly." 

We  are  reminded  of  Goethe's  words  con- 
cerning his  former  relationship  with  Frau 
von  Stein  (see  above  p.  104).  ButHolderlin 
does  not,  like  Goethe,  directly  assume 
acquaintanceship  or  relationship  in  an 
earlier  state  of  existence.  It  is  enough  for 
him  to  refer  to  the  dreams  of  his  childhood 
within  the  limits  of  this  present  life,  and  he 
therefore  continues  as  follows  : 

"  Then  it  was,  in  wandering  day-dreams, 
Heedless  of  the  cheerful  day, 
That  beneath  the  spreading  branches 
I,  in  happy  boyhood,  lay, 


THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 

Then  the  May-time  of  my  soul 
Slow  unfolded  sweet  delight, 
And  I  felt  thy  heavenly  breath 
O'er  me,  as  the  Zephyr  light." 

Assuming,  then,  that  experience  of  this  kind 
can  merely  revive  and  intensify  certain  dim 
recollections  of  early  life  in  this  world  and 
that  we  cannot  recall  any  earlier  state  of 
existence,  what  is  the  use  of  believing  that 
this  life  is  an  expiation  for  the  guilt  which 
we  have  incurred  in  former  lives,  or  what 
does  it  matter  in  what  form  we  are  born 
again,  if  no  memory  can  connect  this  present 
mode  of  existence  with  any  that  may  be 
to  come  ? 

The  solution  of  this  great  problem  of 
existence  which  metempsychosis  professes 
to  offer  thus  leaves,  in  general,  many  diffi- 
culties unanswered  ;  therefore,  if  the  theory 
be  examined  from  the  religious  point  of  view, 
it  is  more  than  ever  difficult  to  recognise  it 
as  the  means  specially  chosen  by  God  for 
uplifting  the  human  soul  to  Himself.  But 
in  these  matters  we  can  only  conclude  by 
132 


CONCLUSION 


humbly  admitting,  with  Herder's  Charicles 
(at  the  end  of  the  dialogues  upon  metempsy- 
chosis), that  "  we  will  not  venture  to  make 
the  secret  ways  of  Providence  into  a  hypo- 
thesis serving  as  a  track  or  high-road,  upon 
which  mankind  would  either  be  lost  in  fear  or 
the  idle  and  insolent  would  secure  a  footing/' 
Yet,  though  we  are  enclosed  within  the 
limits  of  our  short  earthly  life,  we  aspire  to 
the  infinite,  because  an  eternal  flame  is 
burning  in  our  hearts.  In  letters  of  fire 
it  seems  to  proclaim  that  we  must  in  some 
way  rise  beyond  the  limits  of  ourselves. 
Metempsychosis  is  an  ancient  and  a  serious, 
if  a  feeble  attempt  to  decipher  the  meaning 
of  this  fiery  message. 


PRINTED    BY 

WILLIAM  BRENDON  AND  SON,   LTD, 
PLYMOUTH 


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COUNT  LEO  TOLSTOY 

THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS 

"  Will  set  students  thinking."— Christian  World. 
"  Could  not  be  a  more  helpful  book  to  put  into  the  hands  of 
religious  teachers." — Daily  Chronicle. 

PROF.  ARNOLD  MEYER 

JESUS    OR    PAUL? 

The  author  here  urges  that  although  it  was  Jesus  who  led 
mankind  to  the  intimate  communion  with  God  as  a  Father,  it 
was  mainly  St.  Paul  who  founded  that  form  of  Christianity 
which,  though  hindering  and  embarrassing  in  many  ways  to- 
day, alone  proved  capable  of  spreading  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 

V.   M.  FLINDERS  PETRIE 

PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  EGYPT 
BEFORE    CHRISTIANITY 

"Traces  the  development  of  belief  in  the  creative  'Word,' 
adopted  by  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  who  gave  it  a 
new  significance." — Northern  Echo. 

"Shows  what  Christianity  meant  to  those  who  actually 
heard  the  teaching  of  the  Way." 

PROF.  WILLIAM  WREDE 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NEW 
TESTAMENT 

Correcting  certain  inherited  opinions  on  the  twenty-seven 
writings  of  the  New  Testament  and  their  formation  into  one 
whole.  It  gives  them,  however,  a  fresh  interest,  as  the  actual 
documents  of  the  first  Christian  generations. 

PROF.  C.  H.  BECKER 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  ISLAM 

A  study  of  the  similarities,  differences  and  the  interaction  of 
ideas  between  the  two  schools  of  religious  thought,  and  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  possibility  of  a  Moslem  expansion. 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  45  Albemarle  Street,  London,  W. 


Harper's  Library  of  Living  Thought 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne 

THREE  PLAYS  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

Leo  Tolstoy 

THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS 

W,  M.  Flinders  Petrie 

PERSONAL     RELIGION     IN     EGYPT     BEFORE 
CHRISTIANITY 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge 

THE  ETHER  OF  SPACE  (Illustrated) 
Prof.    William   Wrede    (University    of    Breslau) 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 
Prof.    C   H.   Becker    (Colonial  Inst.,   Hamburg) 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  ISLAM 

Prof,  Svante  Arrhenius  (Nobel  Inst.,  Stockholm) 
THE  LIFE  OF  THE  UNIVERSE.  2  vols.  (Illustrated) 

Prof,  Arnold  Meyer  (University  of  Zurich) 
JESUS  OR  PAUL? 

Prof,  D,  A.  Bertholet  (University  of  Basle) 
THE  TRANSMIGRATION  OF  SOULS 
Forthcoming  : 

Sir  William  Crookes 

DIAMONDS 
Prof.  Ernest  A*  Gardner  (University  of  London) 

RELIGION    AND    ART   IN    ANCIENT    GREECE 

Prof,    Reinhold    Seeberg    (University  of   Berlin) 
REVELATION  AND   INSPIRATION 

Theodore  Watts-Dunton 

POETIC   "ADEQUACY"   IN   THE   TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 

Prof,  P,  Vinogradoff  (Oxford  University) 
ROMAN  LAW  IN  MEDIAEVAL  EUROPE 

Other  volumes  will  be  shortly  announced 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS  June,  1909 

45  Albemarle  Street        ::        ::        London,  W. 


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